weegeebored, leafyog, 2007
Certains droits réservés.

What are probiotics?

The World Health Organization defines probiotics as “Live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host”. Probiotics are not to be confused with prebiotics, which are the indigestible food substances that we can eat to selectively stimulate the growth of the microorganisms already present in our digestive tract. Unlike prebiotics, probiotics are living microorganisms that we can ingest in order to provide health benefits. Probiotics are often associated with common foods and health supplements because they are often present in foods such as yogurt, milk, juices and soy beverages. They are also present in dietary supplements and often used in health as a preventative medicine or in the maintenance of overall health.

What types of bacteria are “probiotical”?

The most common type of probiotics that are found in our food and dietary supplements are from the Lactobacillus (L.) and Bifidobacterium (B.) groups. Within these groups, there are many different species such as L. casei, L. gasseri, L. reuteri, L. acidophilus as well as B. bifidum, B. infantis, and B. breve. Before the addition of these probiotics to our food and supplements, safety tests are done to determine if the potential probiotic is safe for human consumption. Because probiotics are simply the administration of bacteria that are already present in your digestive tract, they are often well tolerated. Side effects are usually mild and are gastrointestinal in nature – such as gas or bloating – making it an attractive use in medicine.

What makes a good probiotic?

A probiotic must possess certain qualities in order for it to be effective. First, a probiotic needs to remain viable after it has passed through the highly acidic environment of the stomach. A probiotic has to reach the small intestine, the area where we absorb all of our nutrients from the food we eat, if it wants to confer its health benefits to the host. Second, the probiotic must be able to attach and colonize on the epithelial cells of the intestine. The action of a probiotic colonizing within the intestine acts as a protective measure against the colonization of pathogenic bacteria thereby preventing infections. Finally, it needs to confer its health benefits to the host. These benefits may be to prevent infection of pathogenic bacteria, to secrete substances that may stimulate immune responses, decrease the uptake of fats and cholesterol, or simply secrete molecules that have been shown to promote the health of specific organs in the body.

Probiotics in the prevention and treatment of disease.

Probiotics have already been shown to be helpful in the treatment of diseases, including acute and travellers diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. They have also been shown to be useful as having preventative effects for conditions such as skin eczema, vaginal yeast infections and urinary tract infections. Furthermore, probiotics have the ability to give your immune system a boost, thereby preventing or reducing the severities of colds and flu.

For example, when a person takes antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, those antibiotics destroy the “bad” infective bacteria that are invading your body, but they also damage the “good” bacteria that are a part of your natural microflora. As a result, these newly acquired spaces in your digestive tract, once occupied by “good” bacteria, are great places for opportunistic pathogens to invade, causing a secondary infection. The regular consumption of probiotics during antibiotic treatment can alleviate these post-antibiotic treatment infections and be used as a preventative medicine against secondary infection.

Toby Kurk, [060220] Unidentified bacterium dry
tapping-mode (002) xy 620nm z 160nm, 2006
Certains droits réservés.

Potential probiotical drug treatments.

Current research is working towards the development of the first probiotical drug. There are many research laboratories working with specific bacteria that can help in the treatment of specific diseases, such as cardiovascular disease. High levels of Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) (“bad”) cholesterol and low levels of High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) (“good”) cholesterol, have been associated with cardiovascular disease. Current pharmaceutical medications work towards decreasing “bad” cholesterol and increasing “good” cholesterol in order to prevent cardiovascular disease. Specific probiotical species, such as the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium mentioned above, can secrete chemical substances that have been shown to lower “bad” and increase “good” cholesterol, making it a potential in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. Therefore, research is aiming to use probiotics as medications used in the treatment of specific diseases, such as cardiovascular disease.

When “good” bacteria go “bad”.

While the effects of probiotics can be beneficial, studies have also shown that administering a probiotic does not have a permanent effect as the probiotic is not able to colonize permanently. This means the continuous administration of probiotics may be necessary if a persistent effect is desired. Concerns have also been raised about the use of probiotics as medicines because they are living microoganisms that have the ability to change, adapt and mutate. Bacteria have the ability to exchange genetic material, which can mean that bacteria can transfer genes to one another. This can include genes that confer antimicrobial resistance, which is of great concern when it comes to the use of bacterial species in medicines. Bacterial mutations and genetic transfer may prove to be beneficial to the bacterial cell itself, but can also be detrimental to the host, as is the case with antibiotic resistant bacteria. In addition, probiotics are bacteria and therefore have the potential to cause infections, especially in high risk individuals such as children, elderly patients as well as immuno-compromised individuals (such as patients who are HIV positive and individuals who are on chemotherapy treatment). Although probiotics may be useful in the treatment of diseases, we cannot forget that bacteria are living systems that have the potential to change and adapt, making them unpredictable.

Conclusions

Probiotics have already been used in complementary and alternative medicine to help in the treatment or prevention of many diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, Chron’s diesease and urinary tract infections. Research is currently working towards creating the first probiotical drug to treat specific diseases such as cardiovascular disease. Probiotics are an attractive choice as they are often a bacterial type that already lives symbiotically in your digestive tract, therefore minimal side effects are experienced. As research continues identifying the probiotics that are present in the digestive tract, there will be more and more choices available for probiotical solutions as preventative medicines and in the treatment of disease. Keeping in mind the unpredictability of living micro-organisms, much research still needs to occur in order to determine safe and effective ways to manage health and disease with the use of probiotics.

References:

Doron S, Gorbach SL. Probiotics: their role in the treatment and prevention of disease. Expert Review of Anti-Infective Therapy. 2006; 4(2): 261–275.

Fuller R. Probiotics in human medicine. Digestive tract. 1991 Apr;32(4):439-42.

Nation Centre of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. An introduction to probiotics. Available at http://nccam.nih.gov/health/probiotics/introduction.htm. Accessed July 24, 2011.

Ooi, LG and Liong MT. Cholesterol-lowering effects of probiotics and prebiotics: A review of in vivo and in vitro findings. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2010; 11: 2499-2522.

Rastall RA. Bacteria in the digestive tract: friends and foes and how to alter the balance. J Nutr 2004; 134: 2022S-2026S.

World Health Organization. Guidelines for the Evaluation of Probiotics in Food. Available at http://www.who.int/foodsafety/fs_management/en/probiotic_guidelines.pdf. Accessed July 24, 2011.

Joost J. Bakker, sans titre, 2010
Certains droits réservés.

The principle of observation through photography

Visual observation is a cultural process. For this reason, it is socially imbued and, as such, an object of criticism. Before being associated with a scientific method, visual observation is an ordinary practice for everyone. Being a part of everyday life, it seems obvious and common. However, when used through photography as a scientific method of data collection, visual observation differs from the usual practice by a systematization of the observation: it focuses on observation of social life manifestations. Furthermore, its finality is underlined in the scientific description of observed events. Observation is an integral part of ethnography, which in this case focuses on photography as a form of data collection. Therefore, an ethnography based on photography involves a real risk of misinterpretation of social phenomenon observed.

Despite this risk, as a scientific information source able to contribute to the anthropological knowledge of a society, the photographic picture constitutes an ethnographic document. Therefore, photographic pictures have a particular nature: they constitute social links between the observers—the anthropologists—and the observed—the subjects. As a result, photography must be understood as a link between the observed and the observer. Photography, then, results in a social relation. By witnessing the experiences of other people, photography becomes an ethnographic document required for the anthropological analysis. It is through the analysis of its content that the anthropologist makes intelligible the photographic document and extracts the scientific value. The photographic image is thus promoted as a source of knowledge in anthropology.

This process is made possible by showing what is beyond words. Photography reveals the unconscious content in the scene. It contains what is not expressed and what is not translatable by oral and writing tools. Photography, when practiced as an ethnographic method, that is to say when it is conceived as a social link between the photograph and the subject, advances anthropological knowledge. This social relation legitimizes the photographer in the environment studied. This legitimacy further depends on the quality of observation and therefore the quality of information collected. Based on a social relation characterized by confidence between the photographer and his subject, this approach constitutes a scientific method of carrying out specific observations. Thus, it is the quality of this relation that characterizes the scientific content of photography. Indeed, a successful photography implies photographer’s acceptance in the social environment observed (in a family, a village, or a neighborhood).

The photographic technique

Within anthropological research, the photographic technique is the context of production and collection of information that interests the researcher. In addition to social acceptance, successful photography depends on the choices and freedom of the anthropologist to shoot any event characteristic of social life. To ensure freedom of action, knowing the characteristics of neighborhoods subjected to research is essential. That means, firstly, to make contact with population, and secondly, to identify architectural specificities of districts to assess the conditions for outdoor and indoor photography (ambient light, color, reflection zone shadows, architecture and configuration of habitat). In the context of poverty, population approach is a fundamental stage of the methodology: it determines not only the photographic result but also the value of scientific content.

The first approach is immediately supplemented by the observation in situ (extended family settled in neighborhoods), without immediately shooting. Explanations to people involved are essential to decrease initial reluctance, which in many cases proves to be more a form of negotiation that a real objection towards photographer’s presence. Only after regular visits a sense of mutual trust, although relative, can be established. It is at this precise moment that shooting begins.

Aiming to maximize the informative content of photography, shooting is based on the spontaneity of the subject, limiting any constructed behavior. This requirement means taking photographs without giving any indication at the time when the shutter releases. To succeed, the shot must to be as natural as possible, the camera must become one with the photographer and his presence must be forgotten by the subject. To emphasize spontaneity, action of shooting takes place in the continuity of natural movement of scene observed; this is the ethno-photographer that fits his subject and not the reverse. This technique places photography in the heart of the scene observed in order to allow viewer to create an intimate contact with the subject. This element is based on the intimacy created by proximity of observation expressed through photography. Spontaneity and movement highlighted do not break the scene observed: they do not impose a specific photographic time, but instead insert photography in the movement of the scene. Thus, photography testifies to the continuity of movement and is a testimony of people’s living conditions.

EJP Photo, Indirect Observations, 2009
Certains droits réservés.

This photographic technique’s aim is to highlight the first and the second plan of picture. This requires some control over the aperture by favoring an open field to separate the foreground from the second and the third plan. This technique requires a degree of confidence with the subject because this approach implies that photographers present themselves as partners for dialogue and communication. Sometimes a simple glance is enough and more significant than long periods of speech. This approach requires the photographer to become an actor of the observed scene.

To shot the event on film, it is preferred to use professional black & white film with low and medium sensitivity (125 ASA 400 ASA). The choice of the sensitivity depends on ambient light conditions. Furthermore, using a 100 mm focal has the advantage of not distorting the real proportions of the subject and thus helps us preserve the original expression of the body. The use of such material and the use of this technique forces a photographer to keep a distance and to be close to the observed subject at the same time. Distance from the photographer to the subject fits into an intimate relationship. It is necessary to be close to the subject, but at the same time far enough away to preserve freedom of action. It is a social relation, a dialogue in which an ethno-photographer must find his or her place: he or she must not be too close to risk becoming more involved than necessary, and not be too far to risk becoming a stranger to the scene.

Scientific content of photography in the context of anthropological research

There are real difficulties arising from photographic reproduction of phenomena relating to the reality of life in poverty. The reality of observation resulting from photography is a reverse reality, since it is returned to the observer through the framework of photography. The information revealed by photography belongs to the field of cultural re-interpretation of the observation. Without any analysis, photography becomes a presupposition of reality, the subject becoming a picture of what he or she is supposed to be in reality, through the eyes of the observer—the photographer. Photography is an object built in a particular time-space: a photographic time whose framework and timing is determined by a photographer, as well as the focus on particular aspects of the scene observed. To overcome the ambivalence within both—the interpretation of the subject by the photographer, and the reinterpretation of the photograph by the viewer—and to allow photography to become an ethnographic document, photography must be full of sense regarding the description of the scene. This sense is determined through the anthropological analysis of photography. This analysis ranks the subject in his or her original setting and neutralizes all opinion otherness resulting from the emotional interpretation. Moreover, anthropological analysis also needs to decode symbolism contained in photography; anthropological analysis needs to reveal the scientific information and give the photograph the status of an ethnographic document. Thus, photography becomes a way of relating reality by explaining observed phenomena in an original culture. In this way, photography becomes a link between the original culture of the subject and the observer.

Subjects chosen to illustrate perception of poverty research are individuals living in poor neighborhoods and bad conditions. The purpose of such work is to highlight the everyday life through observation of characteristic scenes in the context of poverty. The photographs show individuals in their daily difficulties. This work reflects the experience of poverty as it manifests social life from interior. Photography helps establish the idea of a cultural expression of poverty as manifested through individual and social body. One manifestation of the cultural expression of poverty is underlined by appropriation of space by children and adults living in unhealthy conditions. During my research I have found unhealthy and ravaged areas that became playgrounds for children and places of settlement for people. The cultural dimension of poverty is demonstrated through the ability to transform such an area into a place to live. To shoot those aspects of social life helps make photography a true ethnographic tool.

Conclusion

Photography is a cultural representation. In the case of its use as an ethnographic method, photography is a cultural representation that permits a scientific reinterpretation of social phenomena observed. Through its scientific value, photography becomes a scientific document. Reliability of the ethnographic method based on photography depends as much on what is observed or noted as on the consequent analysis. As an ethnographic document, photography keeps observations alive because it contains the entire observation; moreover, it contains the subjects’ unconscious: their present, their past and their future. The photographic activity in the context of social science research in general and anthropology in particular requires ignoring all sentimental and moral values.

Through analysis, photography will reveal what was not observable at the time of shooting. It will underline details and make them intelligible to the viewer. It will reveal the unconscious content in the scene. Therefore, when the photographic technique is adapted to a specific situation of anthropological fieldwork, it becomes a highly informative form of scientific data collection.

Alexandre Chartrand, AAA (détail)
Tous droits réservés.

Godin

Le parcours tant poétique que politique de Gérald Godin s’avère d’autant plus marquant qu’il s’acheva trop tôt lorsque que celui-ci, âgé d’à peine 55 ans, succomba à une longue lutte contre un cancer du cerveau. D’abord journaliste au Nouvelliste de Trois-Rivières, Godin se démarqua dès le début des années 1960 par la publication, dans la revue Parti Pris, de poèmes écrits en joual, notamment ses célèbres « Cantouques », une déformation populaire et souvent anglicisée du français qui est alors décriée par l’intelligentsia de l’époque, à commencer par le Frère Untel (nommément Jean-Paul Desbiens – dans ses fameuses Insolences).

Sans qu’il ne soit lui-même un théoricien du socialisme révolutionnaire propre à Parti Pris, Godin mis de l’avant une position littéraire par rapport au joual, ou plus simplement au français à la fois typique et déglingué des couches populaires, comportant sans contredit un aspect politique. Langue empreinte du colonialisme anglo-saxon alors omniprésent dans le quotidien des Canadiens français, le joual utilisé par Godin est également un instrument de valorisation de la culture du peuple et de prise de conscience de l’aliénation collective :

Moi, je veux faire une poésie de la quotidienneté. (…) Je veux faire une poésie triviale (…). J’ai justement écrit joual pour permettre aux gens de se retrouver. En grande partie, Les Cantouques est une poésie faite au nom des autres plus qu’en mon nom propre. C’est même la partie de mon livre dont je doute le plus, la plus contestée et la plus contestable d’ailleurs. Le joual, c’est le peuple du Québec photographié à l’infrarouge.[1]

Ce parti pris poétique (et politique) de Godin pour le peuple et sa langue ne lui valut d’ailleurs, sa vie durant, qu’une faible reconnaissance de la part de l’establishment littéraire. De son côté, Godin continua son travail de journaliste (Maclean et Québec-Presse) et de recherchiste (Radio-Canada et ONF), en plus de prendre la direction des Éditions Parti Pris.

Impliqué dans les milieux artistiques et aussi nationalistes, Godin fait également la rencontre, au début des années 1960, de la chanteuse Pauline Julien, dont il fut le compagnon de vie jusqu’à sa mort. Mentionnons à cet égard que la soirée organisée suite à la projection du documentaire, qui donna une large part à la poésie de Godin, mit également en scène la correspondance souvent passionnée des deux amants par la bouche de Pierre Curzi et de sa propre compagne Marie Tifo, un moment de pur bonheur témoignant de leur amour profond comme de la fragilité de l’homme quand la maladie le frappa.

Emprisonné comme plusieurs intellectuels et hommes de lettres lors de la crise d’Octobre, Godin en garda un amer souvenir et la marque de l’arbitraire parfois violent d’un gouvernement fédéral cherchant à tout prix à écraser le nationalisme québécois naissant. Engagé dans la course aux élections de 1976, il triompha aux dépens du Premier ministre Robert Bourassa dans la circonscription de Mercier, soit le Plateau Mont-Royal (alors un quartier ouvrier et immigrant plutôt pauvre et encore loin du Plateau branché d’aujourd’hui).

Alexandre Chartrand, Feu Godin (En pétard)
Tous droits réservés.

Faisant campagne à bicyclette (!), Godin se distingua rapidement par sa proximité avec ses électeurs, sa sensibilité à leurs situations particulières et, notamment, par le lien étonnamment fort qu’il créa avec diverses communautés culturelles. Voilà d’ailleurs comment il devînt, au tournant des années 1980 sous le gouvernement Lévesque, ministre des communautés culturelles et de l’immigration, témoignant d’un nationalisme d’une ouverture peu commune (et quasi prémonitoire) à la diversité de la société québécoise.

Affaibli par un cancer du cerveau qui se manifeste dès 1984, Godin conserve malgré tout ses fonctions à l’Assemblée nationale, combattant à la fois la maladie ainsi que l’évacuation du projet national au sein du PQ suite au départ de René Lévesque. Ainsi, Godin fut l’un des principaux dénonciateurs de la stratégie de Pierre-Marc Johnson, instiguant le retour de Jacques Parizeau au sein du parti et le recentrement de celui-ci sur l’idée de souveraineté.

Le film

Le documentaire réalisé par Simon Beaulieu étonne d’abord par l’ampleur de la recherche qui fut nécessaire à cette énorme fresque alliant archives et entrevues avec des acteurs-clés de l’époque et des connaissances du poète. Adoptant le parti de restituer le parcours de l’homme dans le contexte d’une époque particulièrement mouvementée, Beaulieu présente un film qui parle non seulement de Godin et de sa vie, mais également du Québec des années 1960 jusqu’aux années 1990.

Laissons maintenant le soin au réalisateur de décrire sa démarche documentaire.

Le Panoptique : Ton film fait une utilisation extensive et peu commune d’archives diverses, au point de se rapprocher d’une démarche d’historien… Pourquoi ce parti pris formel?

Simon Beaulieu : C’était important pour moi de rester fidèle au document historique, de ne pas faire mentir l’histoire et la meilleure façon d’y arriver est de laisser la matière parler d’elle-même. Du point vue cinématographique, je voulais aussi raconter l’histoire de Godin à travers une matière vivante et organique.

En cinéma documentaire, je déteste les reconstitutions historiques et tous les procédés de ce genre. Je voulais donc travailler – un peu à la manière d’une démarche sculpturale – à même ce que je nommerais la mémoire collective audio-visuelle québécoise. L’équipe a travaillé très fort afin de trouver du matériel inédit. Nous voulions construire une trame narrative à partir d’images et de sons neufs de manière à présenter l’histoire depuis un angle différent. Il y a des images tellement utilisées que leur signification est évacuée. Nous voulions éviter cela et offrir une version de l’histoire qui donne le sentiment d’une découverte, d’un renouveau et donc, d’un avenir.

Alexandre Chartrand, Toujours là
Tous droits réservés.

Le Panoptique : À ton avis, en quoi le parcours poétique et politique de Godin nous renseigne-t-il sur l’évolution du Québec depuis les années 1960?

Simon Beaulieu : Godin était partout dans les années 60. Il a œuvré dans plusieurs domaines, à chaque fois avec fougue et empressement. Il incarne à mon sens le foisonnement de cette période charnière. Poète, journaliste, éditeur, conjoint de la grande passionaria de la lutte pour la libération nationale québécoise Pauline Julien, Godin est l’incarnation du Québec de l’époque. Par son ouverture, sa curiosité, sa multidisciplinarité, il a su cerner l’ensemble des problématiques de son temps.

Je pense que c’est ce qu’il y a de plus fondamental chez lui et qui pourrait dans une certaine mesure le rapprocher d’un personnage comme René Lévesque; cette capacité à faire une lecture juste de la réalité ambiante, de sentir, tel un sismographe, ce qui se trame dans l’univers social et de parvenir à modifier des éléments de la réalité avec un pragmatisme étonnant. Godin n’était pas un idéologue, c’était un homme d’action qui voulait changer le monde de façon réelle et qui a fait en sorte d’y travailler toute sa vie durant.

Le Panoptique : Selon toi, quel est l’héritage de Godin, en quoi sa vie et son œuvre interpellent-ils le Québec d’aujourd’hui?

Simon Beaulieu : Godin a beaucoup travaillé pour inclure les immigrants à la culture québécoise et les faire adhérer au projet indépendantiste. Il les aimait profondément et voulait améliorer leur sort. Je crois qu’il s’agit d’une grande leçon d’humanité dont tous les partis politiques devraient s’inspirer.

Godin défendait aussi, par son action militante quotidienne, une certaine culture du respect de la démocratie et des opinions des citoyens. Il répétait souvent que le politicien doit représenter le citoyen auprès du gouvernement et non pas représenter le gouvernement auprès du citoyen. Je pense que le gouvernement actuel (le gouvernement Charest) devrait s’inspirer de cela. Il est inconcevable de gouverner sans tenir compte des désirs des gens. Cette attitude cultive le cynisme et la démobilisation, ce qui est infiniment dommageable pour le tissu social québécois. Il s’agit d’une attitude irresponsable, la pire à adopter en politique partisane.

Godin était idéaliste, jamais il n’a évacué la part du rêve dans son discours politique et dans sa vie. Au fond, peut-être était-il davantage poète que politicien. Et c’est peut-être ce qui manque dans le portrait politique actuel: un peu de poésie. Je pense que Godin dirait qu’il faut réapprendre à rêver.

Le film Godin, de Simon Beaulieu, sera présenté dès le 18 mars au cinéma Beaubien à Montréal, ainsi qu’au cinéma Le Clap, à Québec.

www.godin-lefilm.com

Réalisation et scénario : Simon Beaulieu
Production : Marc-André Faucher et Benjamin Hogue
Image : Carlos Ferrand
Montage : Simon Beaulieu, Alexandre Chartrand et René Roberge
Son : Catherine Van Der Donckt et Patrice LeBlanc

Les toiles de la série « Hommage à Godin » d’Alexandre Chartrand seront exposées à la galerie Point rouge à Montréal, du 23 mars au 10 avril prochains.

www.galeriepointrouge.com

Notes

[1] « Entretien avec Gérald Godin », Culture vivante, Montréal, janvier 1967. Repris dans Gérald Godin, Traces pour une autobiographie. Écrits et parlés II, Montréal, l’Hexagone, 1994, p. 63-64. Cet extrait est issu de l’article de Joseph Bonenfant « Le cantouque des cantouques québécois », issu du recueil Emblématiques de l’« époque du joual ». Jacques Renaud, Gérald Godin, Michel Tremblay, Yvon Deschamps, sous la direction d’André Gervais, Montréal, Lanctôt Éditeur, 2000, p. 111.

Travlr, Framed Goat, 2009
Certains droits réservés.

Justification of the approach

Anthropology analyzes the manifestations of social life. Observing details, the anthropological approach allows the comprehension of conscious, unconscious and symbolic events that constitute social life. The fundamental object of anthropological studies, as Marcel Mauss[i] pointed out in 1950, is human life.

As an interpretation of cultural phenomena, anthropology at the same time seizes collective phenomena and individual expressions, both of which are the manifestations of social life. Consequently, the specificity of an anthropological research lies in its capacity to describe observations of different cultures without any a priori opinion. Ethnography, as one method of investigation under the umbrella of Anthropology, refers to the collection, classification and transcription of information collected during the research. It reports the observation of events and constitutes the memory of testimony. Assuming ethnography to be the transcription of raw data, one should consider the fact that any ethnography is part of the observation process and thus constitutes a primarily cultural interpretation of the observer. Indeed, does the eye that sees and the ear that listens represent “culture”. An objective interpretation does not exist because it relies on the cultural background of the interpreter; however thought and ordered, all interpretation is socially built and thus unable to perceive without preconceived notions.

In Exercices d’ethnologie, Robert Jaulin[ii] highlights these problems by showing that the observation faculty is linked to the cultural interpretation process. This characteristic of human reason clearly reflects the limit of our observation when used to report social phenomena. This seems to be in opposition to any scientific approach. Consequently, any ethnographic method must consider this restrictive aspect. In fact, the mere presence of the researcher near the population he wants to study does not guarantee the success of the ethnographic study. The scientific value of the analysis depends on the precision of the observations reported, taking into account the subjectivity of the observer as well as other ethnographic discourses. Any anthropological observation should aspire to self-criticism and embrace doubt. The first research challenge is not physical but rather intellectual, since it requires a sincere determination to, as much as this is possible, neutralize a priori perspectives. Anthropological research forces the anthropologist to complete a process of self-reflection in order to diminish exoticism and ethnocentrism. He must transform the experience of personal life and research into scientific work.

The ethnographic methodology presented in this article is based on the practice of photography. This method does not lack difficulties, some of which are directly related to the scientific value of the information collected through visual support such as the photo itself. By constituting an extension of the human eye, the photographic picture is a direct result of a cultural process. Thus, it is legitimate to assume that photography, by focusing on specific parts of the observed scene, can contribute to the imposition of subjective perspectives that might not reflect reality. This danger, applicable to all the ways of anthropological data-gathering, reminds us that a photograph provides a subjective portrayal of reality because it represents the visual and psychological interpretation of the observer (photographer). The need “to frame” a particular event constitutes a first division of the reality observed, based on the choice of the observer. Nevertheless, a careful selection of the subjects photographed, the use of particular photographic techniques, and the scientific analysis of the material, allows us to overcome the limitations of photography as an ethnographic tool. Thus, photography can serve as a data acquisition method that allows a collection of information with scientific value that may exceed that collected by other tools, particularly writing.

With this in mind, let us consider the practice of photography in the context of a scientific approach that views society in its entirety. This approach claims that society is not made up of a linear continuation of individuals but that it forms an indivisible totality. This totality includes behaviours, structures and values, which characterise the society that Ethnography proposes to reveal via photographs. Before presenting the suggested methodology, let us first present the characteristics of research conducted with marginalized populations of Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and Dire Dawa, a town in Ethiopia.

Poor districts of Dakar and Dire Dawa: an example of a harsh environment for anthropological research

A. Davey, Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, 2007
Certains droits réservés.

At first impression, Dakar seems to be an unpleasant city. Its size and intense traffic create a busy atmosphere. In addition, the harassing and daily requests of the bana bana[iii] and street hawkers of any kind provide a constant source of agitation. Moreover, the study of the perception of poverty requires tying strong relations with populations that are difficult to reach due to their economic and social conditions. These elements make the observation fragile. Poor populations occupy certain districts described as unhealthy and dangerous, where high crime rate is prevalent and where the majority of residents live under very poor conditions. For a few years, a renewal of violence in certain poor districts during religious holiday periods, such as the tabaski[iv], has made it difficult to carry out ethnographic research in these places.

For these and other reasons, conducting anthropological research in the poor districts of the capital is difficult, particularly since Senegal is an “ethnologized” country, i.e., the population is frequently the subject of various studies financed by local authorities, international organizations and institutions; this represents an additional difficulty with the investigation of families, insofar as the population has certain “experience” with research. Thus, people may be fast to reply a question in a biased way, or worse, adopt an attitude that is intended to satisfy the interrogations of the researcher. In addition, the rise of mass tourism since the 1980s has strongly influenced the lifestyle of the population and contributed to establishing certain ideas regarding the western way of life. This may have contributed to the construction of an a priori notion associated with the researcher. These characteristics of the Senegalese capital are additional challenges for conducting anthropological research in situ.

Tourists specifically, and westerners in general, are often judged as being uninterested in the culture of the country and insensitive to the living conditions of the local population. Although this interpretation reflects a certain reality of the majority of tourists, it strongly harms the anthropologist. Consequently, anthropologists are indirect victims of mass tourism and popular beliefs. They too are harassed, like any other foreigner, by street hawkers and curious people, who try to profit on the westerners. In addition, some people may try to sell their contribution to the study and provide false information attempting to satisfy the anthropologist. There is no doubt that, despite all his or her efforts, the anthropologist is still seen as a foreigner in the eyes of the local community.

Dire Dawa, located in Ethiopia, also poses many difficulties when it comes to carrying out research on poverty. First, political tension in this area close to Ogaden, a region bordering with Somalia, is intense and constant. Ethiopian military troops are deployed in order to ensure the control of its border with Somalia and to limit incursions of armed groups into the area. This area is characterized by residual tension and sporadic confrontations with various armed groups. This element poses an additional difficulty in conducting anthropological research in Dire Dawa. Indeed, authorities are cautious and suspicious with foreigners and even more so with people who are devoted to research on a sensitive topic such as poverty and displacement of populations at the regional level. Researching poverty forces the researcher to answer questions regarding the reasons for his presence in the area and regarding the goals of his or her work. Also, the risk of bomb attack should not be overlooked. In June 2002, Dire Dawa was subjected to bomb attacks by the Oromo Liberation Forces, an upheaval that, however, did not claim any casualties. More recently, in May 2008, a few weeks after my field work was completed, a murder attack struck the capital Addis-Ababa.

The flow of refugees coming from Ogaden and Somalia creates problems for the Ethiopian authorities. This flow is an important cause of Dire Dawa’s population increase. The majority of newcomers settle in peripheral districts, developing the urban space in a disorderly fashion. In addition, increased density of the population is accompanied by an increased instability of living conditions and a lack of security in the poor districts and suburbs. Problems relating to refugees remain taboo for local administrations; the latter are reluctant to recognize the refugees’ needs and are unwilling to address the unstable social and economic living conditions of these populations.

Although these research difficulties are attenuated over time, the anthropologist is constantly observed by the local population, becoming the study subject of his own subjects. This is characteristic of any ethnographic research field and it forces the anthropologist to create a specific methodology, which takes into account the characteristics of the research environment as well as his own personality. As for me, I chose to appear as a photographer. This choice had two goals. First, it was used in order to limit personal interrogations and, second, to provide a legitimate reason for my presence in the area while creating a role for myself within the community. Indeed, presenting oneself as an anthropologist is often difficult to explain: the work and research goals are never easy to comprehend. Choosing to appear as a photographer helps avoiding ambiguities related to my presence in the area and allows me to be an actor while enabling me to preserve a certain freedom for conducting my field work. For me, this role constructed my research-field character—simultaneously a photographer and an anthropologist—a role that I named Ethno-photographer.

Creating the Ethno-photographer: the focal point of the anthropological approach.

G.A. Hussein, le gare, 2005
Certains droits réservés.

Anthropological research based on the practice of photography presupposes an initial phase in which one must create the first contact with the population studied. This requires establishing oneself as a photographer whose purpose is to document the social life of the district. Using an easily identifiable character, like a photographer, seems to have proven reliable by other anthropologists such as Laurence Wylie[v] who in September 1950 settled in Peyrane,[vi] Vaucluse, and used photography to approach the local population.

Field work requires the building of a network of relationships. This is a necessary condition, ensuring access to information. Using that tool, the anthropologist must become an active observer, establishing dialogue in order to reach the information he is looking for. Though it may not be problem-free, the choice to appear as a photographer creates a local role, which allows participating in the community’s activities. The behaviour and choices that follow from this approach are easily understandable to the target population and my social and cultural status is clear: for them I am a photographer, and for myself I am an anthropologist and a photographer at the same time, an Ethno-photographer.

Establishing relationships based on trust seems to be a prerequisite for the practice of photography in particular, and when conducting anthropological research in general. Among Senegal’s poor appearance is a decisive criterion in creating social relations, also determining the qualitative aspect of the relation. Appearance refers both to the physical and dress appearance and to gestural and linguistic expression. The element of appearance has a dominant role in the process of identification and construction of relationships between individuals. The anthropologist should, as much as possible, be free to choose his or her relations, since he or she meets some individuals who may be interesting subjects for his research as well as others who are less so. The anthropologist must also provide a certain amount of information about him- or herself. The extent to which a participant will open up to the researcher and the quality of the information he or she will provide depends on establishing a trusting relationship between the two.

The anthropologist and the interviewee do not speak the same language and in the case of my research, the interviewee is not from the same social and cultural environment. As for linguistic differences, difficulties of interpretation are important to pay attention to. In spite of using the French language, the meaning of words is not identical, sometimes not even similar. Cultural referents usually differ within the same society, let alone from one society to another and from one social class to another. Partly in order to limit the risks of an erroneous interpretation of information, photography is used in combination with audio recording of the conversations and, whenever possible, note taking. These aids, far from being contradictory, are in fact complementary. The photograph itself allows for a description of a symbolic idea contained in the discourse and the physical world, while the recorded conversation and notes enrich the context of the picture and its subject matter.

End of Part One

The second part of this article will discuss the photographic technique and the scientific content in photos in the context of anthropological research.

Notes

[i] Mauss, 1950 : 285

[ii] Jaulin, 1999 : 43

[iii] Street sellers

[iv] The al aide kabire (tabaski) is celebrated two months and approximately ten days after the Ramadan. It is one of the most significant religious events in West Africa.

[v] Wylie, 1968 : 18

[vi] Such as the author mentions it, the name “Peyrane” does not correspond to the real name of the village, this one having been voluntarily dissimulated in the work of the author.

m-c, Whose Web is it anyway?, 2006
Certains droits réservés.

“It’s the traditional media who did the job,” said Marc-François Bernier, chair of journalism ethics at University of Ottawa to Le Devoir in an interview published few days after the election[a]. “Not new media, nor bloggers, nor those who call themselves citizen or participative journalists. The investigations were done using the good old methods. It’s refreshing.”

According to Bernier, what new media had to offer most of the time was ‘noise’. “Bloggers work as open line presenters,” he said. “They read the papers and then comment on it.”

Bernier’s words, more or less, echoed what David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of The Wire, had to say to the Senate Commerce Committee on May 6[b]. “The Internet is a marvelous tool and clearly it is the informational delivery system of our future,” he said during the hearing on the future of journalism, “but thus far, it does not deliver much first-generation reporting. Instead, it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications, whereupon aggregated websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth.”

If we put aside their contemptuous tone, these comments are hard to refute. According to a study published in 2007 in Journalism, 99 per cent of the posts appearing on six of the most popular political blogs in the U.S. were either comments or analyses on material found elsewhere[c]. Indeed, only a handful of posts were first-hand information.

More recently, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism issued a study on the news ecosystem of Baltimore[d]. The study revealed that only 5 per cent of the new information reported during the time period in which the study took place came from new media.

Bernier was right to say that bloggers were no different from open line presenters. But who ever said otherwise?

“Bloggers comment on the stories of others” said Le Devoir reporter Stéphane Baillargeon, “exactly like columnists from the newspapers do, or radio news analysts, who base their work on the traditional media. Bloggers are no worse than any commentator.”[e]

Whether these comments are just ‘noise’, as Bernier puts it, is up to the audience to decide. Of course, one could accuse the new media of conveying comments rather than news. However, the same accusation would also target more traditional forms of commentary in the media, like columns, news analysis, editorials, etc. In fact, this debate has little to do with new media per se.

A healthy parasite?

According to David Simon, there’s more to it. “Readers acquire news from the aggregators and abandon its point of origin –namely the newspapers themselves. In short, the parasite is killing the host.”

Now that is a much more serious accusation. According to Simon, bloggers are not just like any traditional commentators. They take readers away from the sources, leaving the newspapers to asphyxiate, and slowly take their place.

But are they really? “Of course, blogs are parasitic,” said Lisa Lynch, assistant professor at Concordia University. “But the relationship between the parasite and the host is a symbiotic one. The parasites are not killing the host. Something else is killing it.”[f]

A ‘symbiotic’ relationship? She might well be right. The 2007 Journalism[I1] study cited above showed that almost half (47.6 per cent) of the sites to which the blogs referred were professional news media. In terms of content, 28.8 per cent of the links lead to straight news stories, while another 15.4 per cent lead to opinion pieces, again, from the professional media.

“These bloggers, for the most part,” concluded the authors of the study, “simply engage the facts and information carried in news accounts, accepting them at face value and using them to form their own arguments, reinforce views, and challenge opponents.”

According to the study, far from ‘leeching’ the stories to which they refer, bloggers bring these to the attention of others while engaging a conversation about it, “a conversation distributed more broadly across citizens and journalists”.

“In fact,” wrote the authors, “much of what these blogs do is push readers toward other information that they would not have otherwise read. We would therefore argue that, far from supplanting the professional news media, they provide an important secondary market for its material.”

Blogs would thus be the equivalent of late family arguments beside the fire about what the newspapers said that day. Only now, these private comments about the daily news can potentially reach, through the Internet, a much larger audience than the one the ordinary citizen used to have.

Not only is the ‘parasite’ not ‘killing its host’, but the bloggers’ very reliance on professional media have ironically had the effect of “preserving and reinforcing professional norms of journalism as they disseminate content generated by traditional reporting practices”.

The deception of new media

Still, according to Simon, by commenting on the Internet stories they used to discuss in their living-rooms, citizens are usurping a position traditionally reserved to journalists, thus ‘stealing’ their audience, and as a result, their jobs. “To read the claims that some new media voices are already making,” he said, “you would think they only need bulldoze the carcasses of moribund newspapers aside and begin typing.”

To avoid this usurpation, it is paramount to maintain a clear distinction between journalists and citizens in people’s minds. “A neighbor who is a good listener and cares about people is a good neighbor; he is not in any sense a citizen social worker,” said Simon. “Just as a neighbor with a garden hose and good intentions is not a citizen firefighter. To say so is a heedless insult to trained social workers and firefighters.” By the same logic, he argues that citizen news-commentators are not journalists. According to him, such a deception would have a disastrous impact on the overall quality of stories, since citizens aren’t bound to any professional standards, as working journalists do (accuracy, fairness, balance, objectivity, etc.).

“It is nice to get stuff for free, of course,” he said. “And it is nice that more people can have their say in new media. And while some of our internet commentary is –as with any unchallenged and unedited intellectual effort– rampantly ideological, ridiculously inaccurate and occasionally juvenile, some of it is also quite good, even original.”

Journalists have often expressed in many ways their disdain for new media –blogs, citizen journalism, public journalism, and so on. Some diatribes were more imperious than others, such as an editorial from The Digital Journalist, entitled “Let’s abolish ‘Citizen journalists’”[g].

“Citizen journalist is a misnomer. There is no such thing. There are citizens and there are journalists. […] We advocate abolishing the term ‘citizen journalist’. These people can call themselves ‘citizen news gatherers’, but it is no more appropriate to call them citizen journalists than it would be to sit before a citizen judge or be operated on by a citizen brain surgeon.”

It is obvious that many professional journalists feel that their jobs are threatened. One of the common reactions to this threat has been to highlight, again and again, the clear line between pros and amateurs. Pros have privileges that amateurs don’t.

“But the reality is that in order to be given access to events,” said Dirck Halstead, editor of The Digital Journalist, “whether it is a fire or a political campaign, there must be an accrediting body. You can’t cross police and fire lines by simply saying you want to do that. Try it with your local police department. You can’t waltz into the White House or a summit meeting or embed with a unit in Afghanistan simply because you want to.”[h]

Of course, if it was just a matter of who is accredited and who is not, journalists would not need to worry so much about the rise of new media[I2] .

The thing is, journalists already have good reasons to be anxious about the future of their profession, and are thus eager to see in new media, accredited or not, an aggressive rival threatening to take their place. This anxiety transpires in the numerous diatribes about new media ‘stealing’ the audience, while replacing the ‘good old’ standards of professional journalism with a flow of emotionally-motivated, inaccurate, and deeply biased commentary. Like an ethnic minority at a time of economical crisis, the new media have become, for a number of them, an easy scapegoat for the declining of the profession –understandably or not. I would seem that new media are to blame, and for two different reasons, usually confused and interchangeable in the arguments of journalists: economically, they accelerate the financial decline of traditional media by ‘stealing the audience’, and morally, they are guilty of degrading the standards –and hard-won privileges– of journalism essential to democracy.

Is the new media just an audience with a mouth?

Gary Hayes, Social Media Campaign Tools Flow, 2009
Certains droits réservés.

The irony of all this is that this dreadful “online army of bloggers [that] will supplant the work and value of traditional journalists”, as the authors of the study above put it[I3] c, are none other than the once invisible audience. Only now that readers can write back, some journalists may find it disturbing to note how far their actual audience, with all its ‘ideological’, ‘inaccurate’ and ‘juvenile’ comments, is from the one that they once imagined.

This point was raised by Jim Jarvis, professor at the City University of New York, as he reacted on his blog to anti-blog comments from a tech reporter for the New York Times. “Hey, fool,” wrote Jarvis, “that’s your audience talking there. You should want to listen to what they have to say. You are, after all, spending your living writing for them. If you were a reporter worth a damn, you’d care to know what the marketplace cares about you. But, no, you’re the NYT mighty guy. You don’t need no stinking audience. You don’t need ears. You only need a mouth.”[i]

“Comments reflect where people are with issues,” said Lynch. “The way the papers are constituted –neutral, balanced, objective– does not reflect the way communities are constituted. For journalists who have been committed to thinking and writing in an objective, neutral and balanced way for years, it can be disconcerting to suddenly hear how people really think out there.”

That is not the case for Michael Boone, sports columnists at The Gazette who also writes a sports blog. “I’m really hard to shock,” he said, “but people get extremely emotional with sports. The thing is that, whereas people can’t start yelling and swearing around in a sports bar, they can write everything they want on the Internet.”

This encounter, between readers who feel they can write things they won’t even say, and journalists who are used to a balanced and neutral writing, can certainly be disturbing at first.

One thing is sure though: it is hard to think of any professionals who would tolerate their clients interfering in and questioning their working methods on the grounds that, in the end, they work for them. This is where Jarvis is difficult to follow: it is not because journalists write for their readers that they necessarily want or have to listen to what they have to say.

This comes from a confusion about the role of journalism. Journalists are not talk show hosts, and their role is not to engage the public in discussing the news. Journalists would like to think of themselves as speaking the facts. What the audience decides to make of these facts is of no concern to them.

What happens when people start talking

One of the fears that the Journalism study[I4] quoted abovec emphasized was that blog communities might actually work as ideological echo-chambers. “People like to see their prejudices comforted,” said Boone. “It could become an issue in the long term.” Citizens would turn to the blogs and forums that suit best their political affinities, while avoiding the others. Blogs would thus increase the political polarization of the public, more and more fragmented into communities that never meet.

“And it’s a danger that journalism has always been a buffer against,” wrote Jane B. Singer as early as 1998, in an essay on online journalists[j]. According to Singer, the Web enabled individuals to choose the communities of interest they want to be a part of, while ignoring the others.

Traditional media, on the other hand, make sure that a common knowledge is shared by all and that individuals maintain “ties to a geographical place, to a home […] that includes not only people who are just like us but people who are not just like us”.

Singer made a case for the role of journalism as a community builder, even writing that “community building is inherent in the nature of journalism itself”.

More than ten years after, Lynch is sceptical about this. “The ‘neutral’ media that remain today are not the ones that create a public agora where people come together,” she said.

The foxification of the media made it less and less obvious that journalism is a ‘community builder’ and not just another participant in political fragmentation.

“The atomisation of individuals began way before the Internet,” said Baillargeon. “Societies are less organized around strong principles. The media reflect this fragmentation.”

Are new media increasing this fragmentation? “New media just enabled the diffusion of opinions people used to keep under their coat. A wacko blog might attract a few wackos, granted. So what? We, who come from the twentieth century and remember Stalin and Hitler, have no lessons whatsoever to teach anyone about the diffusion of extremist ideas. If some people have an interest in diffusing extremist ideas, they’ll just find the ways to do it –with or without the Internet.”

But something else is at stake, which is the source of an important misunderstanding between new and traditional media. According to Singer, traditional media is the cure to the ongoing political fragmentation: more objectivity, more neutrality, more balance is needed.

But for Jay Rosen, who first conceived the public journalism model, people are turning to new media precisely because the traditional values of journalism do not meet their needs anymore. People need to talk between themselves face-to-face about the issues that concern them. What journalists have to offer are commentaries about the effectiveness of such and such political moves, analyses on the strategies and techniques of political players.

This kind of coverage, where strategies are dissected at the expense of the issues per se, leads people to think “it is sufficient to understand the inside game of politics without ever having to actually participate in a discussion about their lives as citizens”, as James Compton put it in his 2000 essay on public journalism, published in Journalism Studies[k].

Indeed, people can have night-long political discussions without ever having to reveal their personal views.

According to Lynch, this ‘he said, she said’ journalism is politically emasculating and is losing its audience. “The irony is that you became a journalist because you liked politics, and you end up being the guy who can never talk about politics, because it would put you into trouble. You’re screwed.”

Are political journalists, like sports analysts who cannot take sides, technical experts who keep the public informed on the moves that were made on the chessboard of politics?

Rosen thinks so. It would explain why bloggers are successful: it offers a platform where questions like ‘What should we do?’ can be discussed thoroughly by a public that is tired of the power games. “Rosen,” said Compton, “wants the public to join in a conversation about itself. He wants journalism to help make public opinion trustworthy and, so doing, establish quality public opinion, as opposed to objectivity, as the legitimating principle of journalism.”

Far from having to go back to an even more objective journalism, Rosen believes the media “need to call on the public to exercise its right to discuss political life as individual citizens”.

In this view, traditional media, which never intended to part from disinterested analytical distance, ended up pushing more and more people toward blogging and other new means of expressions.

“The traditional senders of media messages –the journalists– are faced not just with a new delivery method,” said Singer more than ten years ago in the opening of her essay, “but with what may be a fundamental shift in their role in the communication process.” It was already clear then that “journalists [were] swept up in challenges to their one-time franchise of creating and delivering mass-mediated messages”.

What has happened since? According to the Columbia Journalism Review, there have been close to 20,000 lost jobs among U.S. newspaper editorial employees since 1992.

“It’s been a decade since we started trying to reinvigorate traditional journalism without having to break the hierarchy.” said Lynch. “But there is just no revenue model for the traditional hierarchy anymore.”

We will leave to others the task of telling what it is that is killing the host. Advertisers don’t need traditional media as they used to do, since they can now connect directly with consumers through search engines. Dematerialization of contents going online allows instantaneous diffusion with which traditional media can hardly compete. The severe cuts that newsrooms went through to satisfy bottom line pressures from executives and shareholders resulted in a dramatic decrease in news quality, and thus sales.

These are just some of the numerous reasons why traditional media will either find new revenue models, or disappear. Anyone interested in knowing what is ‘killing the host’ should look into these factors first. In fact, David Simon reserved the main part of his speech to tear apart the revenue model that, according to him, ‘butchered’ the whole print industry in less than two decades.

It seems that behind this misunderstanding about the role of journalism hides a much more critical issue. On the one hand, you find people clinging to what is left of journalistic values (objectivity, neutrality, fairness) as the only existing access to the ‘the facts’, which are presumed equivalent to ‘truth’. Around the fortress of objective reporting, lies the infinite, wild and threatening sea of ideologies.

On the other hand, you find people tired of the endless power games, determined to push their ideas forward, rally people around them and jump into the political arena. ‘Facts’ have no value in themselves –they need to be used, appropriated by discourses, discussed, opposed, doubted or acclaimed in the vast agora of politics. For more and more people, it seems that, behind so-called ‘objective’ reporting, lies an unsustainable status quo that needs to be broken, and an ideological posture that needs to be unmasked.

The debate, as we see, might well surpass the new media issue.

And we’re starting to realize that bloggers aren’t the culprits.

Notes

[a] Baillargeon, Stéphane, “Les électeurs restent indifférents à l’appel des médias.” Le Devoir. 3 November 2009.

[b] Simon, David. “Wire creator David Simon testifies on the future of journalism.” Reclaim the media. May 2009. http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/journalistic_practice/wire_creator_david_simon_testi0719

[c] Reese, Stephen et al., “Mapping the blogosphere”, Journalism 8.3 (2007): 235-261

[d] “How News Happens : A Study of the News Ecosystem of one American City”. Journalism.org. January 2010. http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/how_news_happens

[e] Personal interview.

[f] Personal interview.

[g] “Let’s abolish ‘Citizen journalists’”. The Digital Journalist. December 2009. http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0912/lets-abolish-citizen-journalists.html

[h] Rosen, Jay. Quote and Comment. December 2009. http://jayrosen.tumblr.com/post/274294279/my-strange-q-a-with-the-editor-who-said-we-must

[i] In Lemann, Nicholas, “Amateur Hour : Journalism without journalists”. The New Yorker. August 2006. http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060807fa_fact1

[j] Singer, Jane B. “Online journalists: Foundations for Research into Their Changing Roles”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 4.1 (1998)

[k] Compton, James. “Communicative Politics and Public Journalism”. Journalism Studies 1.3 (2000): 449-467

Nancie Battaglia,
Bill McKibben Portrait, 2009
Certains droits réservés.

MB: What is 350.org?

BM: 350 is the most important number in the world. James Hansen at NASA produced a paper saying that any amount of carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million is not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed or to which life on earth is adapted. We’re already past 350 – we’re at 387 – and rising which is why the Arctic is melting; it’s why Australia is on fire; it’s why we’re seeing historic floods and so on.

Our organization, 350.org, is planning a huge global day of action on October 24 all around the world six weeks before the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen. It’s going to be the biggest day of environmental action the world has ever seen.

MB: What does the 350 ppm target mean in terms of the emissions reductions that will be required?

It requires that we stand on the brakes and throw this whole system into reverse. Not a gradual braking to a halt but a squealing U-turn. It basically means weaning ourselves off fossil fuels by the middle of this century and we have got to leave most of the coal in the ground.

I wrote the first book about this twenty years ago called The End of Nature, which isn’t particularly cheerful, but even then we didn’t understand quite how quickly we were going to need to move.

Kirsten Spry, Carbon Planet -
Ice Sculpture in Darling Harbour – 19, 2007
Certains droits réservés.

MB: Many scientists now think it is too late to stop global warming. Do you think that 350 is a realistic target and that we still have time?

BM: It’s as realistic as we make it. It’s not that we’re going to stop global warming. We’re not. The question is whether we’re going to stop it short of some civilization-scale challenge or not and that’s an open question that will be decided in the next few years.

MB: What needs to be done for us to get to 350 ppm?

BM: The sine qua non is to get a price on carbon fast. If that price is stiff enough, then hopefully that will put market systems into action and we’ll see a large scale and rapid mobilization of resources. We also need quick investments by governments in clean energy research and direct regulation of some carbon sources like automobiles.

MB: How have we become so reliant on fossil fuels and why have we completely failed to address this problem so far?

BM: Because fossil fuels were incredibly cheap and incredibly powerful. That’s why we’re rich in some of the ways and why we’re reluctant to let go. And of course there are also incredibly powerful vested interests that make unbelievable amounts of money. Exxon Mobil made more money last year than any company in the history of money. Hence the need for organizing.

MB: Would you agree with Thomas Homer-Dixon when he says that “change of the magnitude we require happens only when we are galvanized by some kind of crisis or systemic breakdown”?

BM: I think we have that now. What does it mean when the Arctic, which has been frozen for millions of years, melts? What does it mean when the government of Australia says we’re not going to call it a drought any longer because drought implies it might come to an end some day? We’re in that breakdown.

MB: What would the implications of a post-carbon economy be for the tar sands in Alberta?

Björn Söderqvist, Copenhagen
Central Space Station , 2008
Certains droits réservés.

BM: We’ve got to leave coal in the ground and we’ve got to leave unconventional oil in the ground. The ecological cost of extracting that stuff is simply too high for the planet to bear. It’s not going to make Calgary oil executives happy but on the other hand it’s going to give Athabascan native people some chance of holding on to those landscapes where they have been for thousands of years.

MB: So 350.org is helping people to plan events all over the world on October 24 including in Canada?

BM: Yes, 350.org is not organizing events directly so it’s really an opportunity for people to get involved with initiatives that are already being planned or to start their own, large or small. And 350.org is the hub of all this. If there isn’t a rink someplace in Canada with 350 hockey players on it, I’ll be disappointed.

We just passed the 1000 actions mark and we are now getting near to half the countries in the world participating. We need many, many more so go to 350.org and register an event and think creatively. It’s like a potluck supper. We’re setting the date and the theme but we need everybody else to do the cooking and we need them to start right away because there’s really not a moment to waste.

Mark Cosgriff, Atheism , 2007
Certains droits réservés.

The predominant historical cause of Western atheism was, until the 21^st century, the increase and development of scientific knowledge available to human observation. The discovery of electricity made Zeus’ ‘thunderbolts’ obsolete; they remain part of our consciousness only as a classical poetic metaphor. In ancient Greece as far back as the 5^th c. BC, the question of injustice unaddressed spurred skeptics to doubt the supremacy of the gods over human life. One specific example was Diagoras of Melos; he was reported to have impiously chopped up a statue of Herakles for firewood, and condemned for revealing the Eleusinian mysteries (which, he noticed, drew the ire of men but seemed not to perturb the ‘gods’ whose existence he denied). For these things, and his atheistic statements, he was charged with blasphemy and, according to Diodoros, forced to flee Athens; but despite the large bounty on his head, he escaped to Corinth, where he died. He was a disciple of Democritus, founder of the Atomists, who believed that the material world had no need of supernatural forces to keep it in place. Over two millennia later, Cambridge physicist Steven Hawking’s revelations in quantum physics, space-time and the event-horizon of ‘black holes’ in his now famous book, A Brief History of Time, continued the scientific tradition of offering answers to questions about the universe by observing data from the knowable world around us. But in the last decade, some of the most religious and unscientific people on the planet are the reason for atheism’s growing dominance over Western intellectual and scientific thinking.

Mark Cosgriff, lunar guardian, 2009
Certains droits réservés.

From these thousands of years ago until very recently, atheism has been regarded as, if not an outright crime, a degenerate belief, and the term ‘atheos’ was reserved for those who, like Socrates, were thought to corrupt morality with their free-thinking impiety. Coined for English from the French atheisme in the late 16^th century, “atheist” was not a label even philosophes like Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau, or their English counterparts like Mill, Jefferson or Paine, wanted to be associated with, calling themselves ‘deists’, which allows for a ‘god’ but one which does not intervene in human affairs or the laws of nature. In the 20^th century, Albert Einstein, who sometimes infelicitously used the word ‘God’ as a metaphor for the unknown[i], completely disassociated himself with God in the Judeo-Christian sense, to tremendous criticism from Jews and Christians who considered atheism “un-American”:[ii] « I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. »[iii] This idea that atheism was a petulant reaction to an unhealthy religious upbringing – and perhaps the neuroses this might spawn – was one reason atheism was implied, but not overtly asserted, by intellectuals of the time. Again, in the 20^th century atheism was primary associated with communism, which to post-WWII society in the West was unpatriotic and grounds for the most extreme forms of censure and legal persecution.

What is it which now leads scientists and political revolutionaries – who since the Age of Enlightenment have been the only vanguard of self-professed, (if passively practiced) atheism in European history – to find themselves part of an ever-advancing movement to assert atheism as a necessary corollary to rational thinking?* In part, it is of course the tremendous discoveries made by science in the last 10 years, from mapping the human genome to aspects of deep space revealed by transmissions from the Hubble telescope. But there is another factor even more powerful, that has brought together great minds from not only the scientific community, but also the intellectual, cultural and political spheres of the Western world as well: the growing concern that it is religion itself which threatens the future of human existence on planet Earth; in the 21^st century, ‘the crusading spirit of the professional atheist’ is precisely what is beginning to characterize the rational mind in the West, provoked to its limits of tolerance by the events of 11 September, 2001.

Atheism, Atheism , 2009
Certains droits réservés.

In his book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris, a Stanford philosophy graduate and founder of The Reason Project, outlines what he sees as world-threatening dangers of religious faith in an age of advanced technology and instant communication. The problem is that religion demands the suspension of reason, faith in patently untrue things, and a willingness to assert as fact what can not be known. Imagining the last day of the life of a suicide bomber, Harris shows how religious faith triumphs over the interests of our common humanity. Taking heinous examples of religiously inspired violence throughout Judeo-Christian-Islamic history, (of which there are no shortage,) Harris makes an unassailable case for condemning religion itself as the root cause of so many of the irrational horrors perpetrated by humankind; but in large part the book constitutes a strong indictment of Islam as a religion that glorifies and demands anti-human behavior, such as suicide bombing as ‘martyrdom’ and the murder of non-Muslim people (bin Laden’s ‘jihad’). In a later book, he extends his alarm to Evangelical Christianity:

“It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves, socially, economically, environmentally or geopolitically…The fact that nearly half the population [of the U.S.] believes [that the end of the world would be glorious] purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.”[iv]

Christopher Hitchens, journalist, literary critic, champion of free enquiry and writer of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, turns his attention to the generally anti-humanist aspects of faith and the specific atrocities accepted by the major books of monotheism, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and the Koran. He cites their justifications for such abhorrent practices as genital mutilation and asks if, but for religion, anyone would otherwise condone them. He denounces our complacency in allowing laws which defend religious beliefs, which he sees as clearly perverse and indefensible. “Doubt, skepticism, and outright unbelief have always taken the same essential form as they do today. There were always observations on the natural order which took notice of the absence or needlessness of a prime mover. There were always shrewd comments on the way in which religion reflected human wishes or human designs. It was never that difficult to see that religion was a cause of hatred and conflict, and that its maintenance depended on ignorance and superstition.”[v] What is more, Hitchens, a former ‘Trotskyist’ and leader of the left, became a vocal and public supporter of the Bush administration’s war on Iraq, arguing that Western values such as freedom and democracy were threatened by unreasonable levels of religious tolerance, while Islamic militants with no intention of reciprocating that tolerance continued to kidnap and behead Westerners and wreak havoc not only on foreigners but on any of their own people who would not conform to fundamentalist views.

Fiona Moore, Atheism Week at ANU,
2009. Certains droits réservés.

But his main argument focuses directly on the connection between deadly force and religion: “The nineteen suicide murderers of New York and Washington and Pennsylvania were beyond any doubt the most sincere believers on those planes. Perhaps we can hear a little less about how ‘people of faith’ possess moral advantages that others can only envy.”[vi]

Evolutionary biologist Dr Richard Dawkins, (author of, The Selfish Gene), Darwinist extraordinaire and secular humanist in extremis, has stated in the very title of his latest book that belief God is a nothing more than a delusion. He believes that only by promoting atheism, and especially by prohibiting children to be indoctrinated into religious faith, can the future of science and humankind progress. He is also revolted by the social and political aspects which deform the societies of the religious, but above all Dawkins deplores the ‘smallness’ of dogma when the vast challenges of life on earth, and the discoveries of space are all before us. Science and technology have given us images from the Hubble telescope which have redefined our knowledge of the edges of the universe, illuminated the nature of dark matter, showed us evidence of how galaxies and planets like ours evolved. The mapping of the human genome has given us overwhelming evidence for the evolution of species and has made his bête noir, ‘intelligent design’ look as ridiculous as crude Biblical creationism.

But science aside, Dawkins deplores religion for its justification of extreme violence:

“Our Western politicians avoid mentioning the R-word (religion) and instead characterize their battle as a war against ‘terror’, as though terror were a kind of spirit or force, with a will and mind of its own. Or they characterize terrorists as motivated by pure ‘evil’. But they are not motivated by evil…they are motivated, like the Christian murderers of abortion doctors, by what they perceive to be righteousness, faithfully pursuing what their religion tells them…they perceive their acts to be good, not because of some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning faith.”[vii]

One thing which is particularly repellent to Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins is the idea that religion cannot be criticized simply because it is a matter of individual belief, that there is a sacrosanct quality to the vicissitudes of irrational beliefs when they are part of ‘faith’, and that this is precisely what makes religion incompatible with rational decision-making and scientific discourse.

“The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that all others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous. We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?”[viii]

Their respective theories about atheism as an imperative philosophy for the 21^st century, their appeal to humanity for a change in the zeitgeist, stem directly from what they see as the threat, posed by all religions but presently being most violently acted upon by Islam, to overpower our Western way of life, by demanding more and more ‘rights’ for those who would deny rights of any kind to non-Muslims. Whereas in the United States since the time of Ronald Reagan, there had been a somewhat powerful Evangelical Christian contingency that effectively lobbied Republicans to create a stifling “religious right”, who were hoping to turn the clock back on women’s rights and establish the U.S. as a “christian nation”, and who went on during the Bush administration to attempt to end the teaching of evolution in schools in favor of ‘intelligent design’, now, argue Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Daniel Dennett, and many others, fundamentalist religion is posing a constant and imminent threat to our very lives. In fact, Dawkins has devoted an entire new book to the refutation of Creationism, called The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution, currently the #1 best seller in the English-speaking world.[ix]

Shawn McClung, Jihad , 2009
Certains droits réservés.

In the Age of Obama, then, atheism is being promoted by intellectuals as not simply a final departure from the cultural remnants of belief in God or a mere rejection of traditional religion, but as a prerequisite for being part of the enlightened community of science, intellectual and cultural activity, and a barometer for rational thought and mental soundness in general. To be religious, they say – to hold any religious beliefs whatever – is to ally one’s self with that element in today’s world that would seek to eliminate the freedom of science to answer the questions posed by the human mind about our environment. It is to reject the notion of universal human rights, to censure free thought, the right to privacy, and individual autonomy, and to tolerate and even condone the very forces which are most ruthlessly lethal to our global civilization.

* There is one other notable category of self-proclaimed atheists that doesn’t get nearly enough credit for their ground-breaking faith busting: comedians. The late George Carlin was a relentless critic of religion, as were Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and today, Eddie Izzard, Ricky Gervais, Janeane Garafolo, Sarah Silverman, Lewis Black and many, many others.

(Niki Lambros also writes The Poliskeptic, a weekly blog on politics and society: http://www.lepanoptique.com/category/formats/blogues/nikilambros/)

Notes

[i] Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, Bantam Press: UK; 2006, pp. 35-37.

[ii] When George H.W. Bush was campaigning for the presidency in Chicago, Illinois, August 27, 1987…Robert I. Sherman, a reporter for the American Atheist news journal, asked whether he would “recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists.” Bush replied, “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” (http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/ghwbush.htm)

[iii] Albert Einstein in a letter to M. Berkowitz, 25 October 1950.

[iv] Harris, Sam, Letter to a Christian Nation, Knopf Doubleday, US; 2006.

[v] Hitchens, God is Not Great Great; How Religion Poisons Everything, Warner Books, USA; 2007, p. 255.

[vi] ibid., p. 32.

[vii] Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, p. 342.

[viii] Harris, Sam, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, WW Norton & Co. NY, USA; 2004.

[ix] http://richarddawkins.net/thegreatestshowonearth

Régine Debatty, David -Ivar Herman Dune aka
Yaya at the Gallery Lucile Corty in Paris, 2008
Certains droits réservés.

There is a picture of Damien Hirst on the cover of the September 15, 2008 issue of Time Magazine. (1) He is dressed up like Bono, making an awkward face, and pulling at his collar like a cut-rate Rodney Dangerfield impersonator. The headline reads: “Artist As Rock Star” (2), and the caption says: “Next week, Damien Hirst expects to sell more than $100 million worth of work at auction. Is this the end of art or the start of something new?” (3).

Around the same time this hyped-up cover caught my eye, I received an invite to an exhibit in Paris at Galerie Lucile Corty for a two-person show by Marlie Mul—–who I knew about in connection to her work with the art collective International Festival—–and David-Ivar Herman Düne, the singer-songwriter behind the band Herman Düne, whose 2006 album Not On Top spent more time on my iTunes than anything else released that year. While it is not unusual for a musician, especially one with any sort of sub-cultural clout, to display work in a contemporary art context, it was the first time I could recall that a songwriter I had spent so much time listening to had shown in an upscale commercial gallery in Paris.

Both the Damien Hirst Time Magazine cover and the David-Ivar Herman Düne Paris exhibit bring us close to some of the most problematic questions surrounding the value, perhaps even the cultural necessity, of perceived authenticity in both music and art. The headline “Artist As Rock Star” suggests that the previous term “art star” insufficiently summarizes Hirst’s $100 million Southeby’s pay day, and that “rock star” brings us closer to the scale and pop culture heft of Hirst’s financial windfall.

And then I am in Paris, at Galerie Lucile Corty, looking at the drawings of David-Ivar Herman Düne. Damien Hirst, like all the other millionaires who have little to do with my daily life, seems a million miles away. My first impression is that Düne’s drawings are better than I expected. Most revolve around the character Blue Big Foot, who is a rather literal and unspectacular representation of his name. There is a large drawing of Big Blue Foot next to a Herman Düne song lyric, followed by a series of extreme close-ups. A close-up of a blue shoulder is underlined with the caption: “my shoulder hurts.” At the centre of the series is a larger close-up of blue fur with a rounded outer edge—perhaps the creature’s belly, but it might also be series of small ocean waves, or even a pattern of relatively pure abstraction.

There is another series of drawings on the opposite wall, like panels in a comic strip, in which Big Blue Foot wanders around in nature. The black and white backgrounds offset the calm happiness of Big Blue Foot. It is a comic strip in which nothing happens; Big Blue Foot tramps aimlessly through the grey world until the final drawing where, still surrounded by peaceful nature, he falls asleep. Clearly, it is not any particular content that makes these drawings compelling, but their style: simple and charming. Big Blue Foot’s facial expression is distinct in each drawing. He is wandering but he is also searching. There is genuine curiosity in how this character takes on the black and white world.

I spend a long time with these drawings, then head upstairs to see the work of Marlie Mul. It is unfair to compare the work of Marlie Mul and David-Ivar Herman Düne. They are from different worlds, have different theoretical frameworks and approaches, and share nothing apart from their dealer, Lucile Corty. However, I am going to attempt a comparison anyways.

Marlie Mul’s work is a series of three sculptural configurations. The first resembles either an architectural maquette of scaffolding for a future-forward Parthenon or the base of a modernist, glass-top table. The second also suggests furniture, a cabinet or plinth, but is abstracted to a degree where it is difficult to find any concrete reference. The third reminds me of two candleholders or vases. All three configurations are made out of Styrofoam but each is painted to suggest some other material: wood, gold or bronze, and plastic. Therefore the material as well is abstracted beyond recognition. Overall, the exhibit gives the impression of very weird, theoretically motivated, furniture.

The artist statement says these objects “play with a sense of order and factors of decoration and ornamentation taking their inspiration from classically known European sculpture and decorative arts.”(4) They reference “social and ideological aspects seen in medieval cathedrals but also Walter Gropius’ inspiration for Bahaus in Weimar.” During her process, the Styrofoam “is cut into small cubes, making it possible to create organic but controlled shapes. By experimenting with different sizes of cubes the artist experiments with proportion and scale,” creating “a fractal object that roughly looks the same at any scale.”(5)

I basically like the work of Marlie Mul: it is intriguing, provoking a desire to learn more about its aims and methods, displaying a complex engagement with its materials and reference points. But my thoughts about the work itself are overshadowed by the ways in which the contrast between the two shows feels like such an intense illustration of the divide between contemporary art and rock ‘n’ roll, almost a caricature of opposing world views. Where David-Ivar’s work is naïve, autobiographical, somewhat narrative and straightforward, Mul’s is difficult to place, playing with structural complexity and multi-layered historical investigations, employing formal strategies that defy any easy narrative reading. The contrast between Düne and Mul re-focuses the way I experience these works. While it is tempting to think that Mul’s high art framework feels old-fashioned in comparison to Dune’s more recent reference points, it is also true that, within his own context, David-Ivar’s influences are equally classical: Robert Crumb, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, The Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman, etc. In fact, many of Düne’s influences would be contemporary with someone like Donald Judd, the artist Marlie Mul’s work, at least in spirit, most recalls.

Jeff Berman, Damien Hirst is a Sick Puppy (2), 2005
Certains droits réservés.

This comparison gets us closer to some of the questions surrounding authenticity that are raised by the high art / rock ‘n’ roll divide. Because it is difficult for me to imagine, during the sixties, someone like Bob Dylan showing his drawings in the same gallery as Donald Judd, though I am certain similar things occurred frequently. I suspect this lack of imagination on my part has something to do with our times. A sixties spirit of freedom and experimentation in which one can easily imagine Judd showing alongside Dylan is no longer the context in which Judd is shown today. He is blue chip now: museums and market. And in such a context, juxtapositions of this nature give a rather different feeling, the feeling that musicians want something from the art world (money) and the art world wants something from musicians (“street cred”, connection to life outside of the art world).

When I arrive back on the main floor I learn that there is more to be seen downstairs, where I find myself looking at another wall of David-Ivar drawings. These ones are more in keeping with my original expectations: small comics that would not feel out of place in a fanzine. Two images, in particular, cast a sharper light on questions of music and art.

In one, Big Blue Foot exclaims, “NOT FUNNY,” and goes on to say:

I have never thought and I hope I will NEVER think that it could be funny in any way, to be ambiguous, or provocative…especially when it comes to historical crimes, mass murders or racism…. I am particularly annoyed and hurt by people not being careful about World War II

And in another Big Blue Foot says, “I’M SORRY,” and continues, “What does it really take to apologize? There is no other way.”

I started writing this article with the assumption that the contemporary art scene accepts, even encourages, the participation of musicians like David-Ivar Herman Düne in hopes of catching a little bit of spill-off from the street-level authenticity of rock ‘n’ roll. I had thought the fact that no one really believes in such authenticity any more was (more or less) beside the point, since even if you are skeptical about authenticity’s underlying structures (publicity aimed at youth, for example), the feeling that something might be ‘authentic’ continues to have some kick, to give energy. And all of this might still be true.

But looking at the drawings in the basement of Galerie Lucille Corty, I suddenly felt that, in this case at least, David-Ivar was bringing something else to the table, an incredible earnestness and sincerity it is difficult to imagine arising organically within the business-as-usual formalism and irony of so much contemporary art. Such emotional earnestness could easily get you laughed out of art school, is almost impossible to contextualize with a quote from Deleuze or Foucault, yet coming from a musician (since sentiment is always permitted in, and is perhaps even the main point of, pop music) it can enter art through the back door.

It is easy to be critical of, and also extremely easy to satirize, contemporary art and the culture that surrounds it. I do not want to do this. It is in fact too easy. I very much believe in art – as a social phenomena, as a cultural value – and am disappointed that so many exhibitions leave me with a gnawing feeling of emptiness. I am wondering what is missing from much art, even from art that on other levels we might consider strong. I notice that the music I listen to rarely leaves me with a similar empty feeling and wonder why this is.

Both Mul and Düne are sincere in their practices. (We can be more skeptical about Damien Hirst’s intentions.) And yet David-Ivar’s work, in a visual art context, appears to possess an excess of sincerity, a down-to-earth earnestness we don’t expect to see when we walk into an upscale gallery. He is sincere not only about the work he is making and showing but also, in his songs, about what it feels like to fall in love and, in some of his drawings, about the things in life that excite and upset him. Contemporary artists like Bas Jan Ader, Sophie Calle, and Tracy Emin also allow this kind of sincerity into their work. But unlike them, Düne focuses less on personal pain and more on his frequent feelings of calmness, excitement and happiness.

My point is not that Düne is a great artist who should be emulated, but rather that, coming from a different context with different experiences and values (and, compared to most contemporary artists, under-educated), he brings something unexpected into the gallery. This is what we might hope for when artists cross over the dividing line between their respective art forms. Aspects that are plentiful in pop music are rare in visual art, and vice versa: for example, instances of criticality in popular music are also few and far between. In writing this article, I fear that I too could be accused of being naïve, of not taking into full account the force of the market in these dynamics, of praising artistic qualities that are subjective and, in a political sense, not necessarily progressive. However, a feeling of emptiness is not what one should expect when going to look at art. And sentiment and earnestness remain some of the strongest ways to let in the flood of emotional reality that, in both our lives and work, has the power to keep such emptiness at bay.

References

(1) This text was written before the crash. Obviously the art market has changed considerably in the intervening period.
(2) Time Magazine cover, September 15, 2008.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Marlie Mul artist statement, Galerie Lucile Corty, September 12, 2008.
(5) Ibid.

Libby Rosof, Rubens Ghenov, 2008
Certains droits réservés.

John Cage : « There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we might to make silence, we cannot. For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible. Such a room is called an anechoic chamber … a room without echoes. I entered one at Harvard University years ago, and heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, and the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. »

As soon as I start to speak, I misrepresent what I mean to say. I make noise. I send out words intending to point at and reach towards silence, but manage in the end only to get turned around, misdirected, and to point only towards a failure, an impossible longing for something to say. For there is a touch of nostalgia in what Cage is saying. As if silence were something we’ve lost and might hope to find again, to rebuild, if only … we had the right technology? As if silence were, perhaps, what we all long for (Dionne Brand).

Certainly, Maisonneuve longs for it. Sieur, Paul de Chomedey, first govenor of the city but transplanted by the novelist Robert Mazjels into present day Old Montreal, talking and talking as if to defy all that and those that tempt him to abandon his failing colonial mission. « Then he says no more. It’s not merely that speech is physically taxing; the sound of his own voice is unbearable to him. Vain chatter. Self-absorbed yammering. Oh, how he longs for the peace of his own silence. To be free at last from ambition, pride. Desire. To abandon himself completely and irrevocably to Her; to those loving arms, that gentle bosom, golden hands, alabaster cheek, dark downcast eyes, perfect lips, to the blessed fruit of her womb… to be released from himself ». To be released, into the silent abandon of desire, from himself, from the weight and the noise of himself that he bears like a cross upon his shoulder dragging noisily against the sidewalk behind. As if himself, his identity, the role he has chosen to play, of founder and hero, stands between him and his own desire to let himself get carried away. Unable to still, himself, to silence the incessant yammer of his hero’s ambition and founder’s pride, voices more powerful than his own impose in the end that silence upon him. And so Maisonneuve, in Mazjels’ novel anyway, remains alone. Untouched. Under arrest.

Earl Tremblay, the anti-hero of Robert Morin’s cult classic, Yes, sir! Madame (1994), likewise longs for, and fails to find, in time, that silence. Narrated in both English and French by Tremblay’s simultaneous, and increasingly unfaithful, self-translations—which he expects will make this « a real fuckin canadian movie »—the film ends on a sequence by a lake in parc LaVérendrye where Tremblay watches a group of naked men, women, and children swimming together silently. To a man virtually destroyed by the violent cacaphony of his own conflicting voices, this silent group seems almost exotic, attractively foreign, fascinating, for how, though they do not speak, they seem not only to get along, and enjoy themselves, but to understand one another and act in concert, effectively, even in crisis.

And there is a reason for that. Silence, pragmatically speaking, is useful—for certain purposes … desireable. In Wasela Hiyate’s, « Jeanne Mance Park », for example, the narrator, a young woman, is « tickled » with anticipation at the thought that the young man who is not yet her lover, Maxime, is about to tell her « what sounds like a sexy story ». Though it isn’t, really, a sexy story. Not explicitly anyway. Though that may, after all, be what sexy is all about. And so the story goes. On the first day in the dojo, he recalls, Maxime and his martial arts teacher « just stood there… facing each other. Two people standing, not moving, not talking, just breathing ». « It was intense », he explains. « I lasted a minute. But the next time we stood there for ten. It was all about learning to listen, which requires stillness. You cannot engage properly with an opponent, or, for that matter, a lover, until you’ve understood the violence within yourself ». The violence of identity, the compulsion to produce and preserve a sense of my own self by silencing everyone else that causes, Maxime notes, « so much trouble », for both lovers and fighters he says, but for collaborators too.

Writing, talking is a risk. I risk imposing on another my own misconceptions, and I risk getting trapped, in turn, myself, in someone else’s misunderstanding of what I meant to say. But deciding not to, or being unable to write, is likewise a risk. Unable to speak I risk being spoken for. Unwilling to write I risk being written off.

A soundwalk is a walking tour in which instead of looking, you listen. As I listen, I begin to be able to isolate, identify, and then to reconstitute the relations, perhaps the rhythms and melodies, the textures of the soundscape in which we are daily bathed. But in order to listen, as Maxime is right to point out, I have to be still. I have to stop moving, stop looking around, stop shifting my weight. Even simply walking, and though I do not drag my feet or swoosh the cloth of my clothes, I make noise enough to distract me from the task of listening. However, for the tour to go on I have to keep walking. In order to stop, I have to first have walked. I have to walk in order to get to where I’m invited to stop next. On a soundwalk, then, stillness is what I require, but that stillness in turn requires that I keep moving. Or as John Cage puts it : « What we require is silence. But what silence requires is that I go on talking ».

The question, then, as always is how? How do I go on talking as silence requires if talking simultaneously means imposing some silence somewhere, upon someone, for certain purposes? « How to write », or talk, as the novelist and essayist Gail Scott puts it, « is always the question ».

Working, she describes, with the « materiality of language », with the way « language hits you like mud in the eye », Scott is very conscious of how, in her writing, she may be « projecting (her own) accumulated lack on unsuspecting bodies », effectively « sentencing them ». She is conscious, that is, of how a sentence, in both its linguistic and judicial senses, can « end up being quite binding ». This is important, for instance, when she writes in English about francophone culture in Quebec (Heroine); or when, as a white tourist, she articulates her own anxieties in terms of the kinds of insecurity experienced by the sans-papiers in France (My Paris). Consequently, the experimental quality of her writing project resides in its effort to make her sentences « as fleeting as possible », « more porous ». To let them « fall apart completely », or « fall into other languages ». To « question the sentence in all kinds of different ways ». Which is to say that she builds into the writing itself an awareness that the very condition of language is its power to bind—« in the sense that the sentence ends with a period »—that « a sentence, even if only for a minute at a time, is a way of putting a final point, making a judgement regarding what is perceived ». Though that moment of silence, performed by the period at the end of the sentence, is a risk—risks imposing that violence within its author onto others—it is a risk, Scott decides, that is ultimately worth the while. « While there is an element of judgement in sentences, at the same time, and it’s the reason why I write fiction », she says, « I think of sentences as things that go back and forth between people and back and forth between groups of people. You have to take the risk of that momentary attempt to string things together, to pin things down, in order to communicate with another person ».

I have to risk reducing all of what silence is, to what it isn’t, in order to open up a conversation on what it might be, what it might be useful for. I have to start speaking somewhere in order to get, in the end, at what I might have to say (about silence). And I have at some point to stop speaking entirely (if only for a moment) in order for what I might be saying, in turn, to have occasion to make sense to someone. Or to paraphrase chapter 11 from Lao-tzu’s Tao, I talk and talk and talk, but it is in the silence when I finally stop that the sense of what I say depends. I string the black mark of letters and words along a blank page to express myself, but it is upon the spaces between them—upon the silence of commas and periods—that the reason I speak depends.

So in order to write about silence, for instance, I might forego pretending to say anything myself about it, and collect instead a series of citations from others, re-construct the contexts from which I’ve drawn them, and string them along one after another, allowing myself not to have to make explicit the line of my own narrative, but leave gaps instead between each paragraph, in the silence of which what I might have to say could perhaps better be heard, as if in performance. Like that iconic image of the Mohawk warrior and the Canadian soldier standing still and eye to eye on the front lines of the Oka crisis. What’s so intense about that photo, I think, even today, is that in the stillness of their silent staredown—a silence only augmented by the logic of still photography—I understand that the encounter being captured on film is not only between two men, but between two whole nations rather. It is not only about a golfcourse or a cimetary, a bridge or a blockade in the present, but about the 400 odd years of colonial history that prepares and produces that front line in the first place. I understand, in the stillness of their steady gaze, a whole history of violence and of resistance, and except for that silence, that stillness, none of the intensity and incessance of that history would be audible.

In the meantime, a series of stimulating conversations that started one afternoon at the dog park led to a decision, shared, to write this piece together. In the gap, again, opened up in the back and forth of the collaborative process between our two separate voices, and in the distance between the different disciplines in which we are trained—in those moments when our two voices, like Irigaray’s image of two lips, « non divisibles en unes », refusing to fuse into only one—we might together be better able to embody that kind of silence that we require, but that requires we go on talking to approach.

Moreover, the fact that I would have to translate her voice into our English text—for she writes, as we converse, in French—would provide an occasion to open up another version of those spaces of silence we are after, which Benjamin, in his essay on translation, calls « pure language », upon which, he says, the « kinship » of languages depends. « So far » is it « from the sterile equation of two dead languages », translation « serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages ». « Languages » he says « are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori … interrelated in what they want to express ». Languages meet, like tongues, in the « intention » they share, « which no single language can attain by itself, but which is realized only by the totality of their intentions supplementing each other », what he calls « pure language » : that « tensionless and even silent depository of truth which all thought strives for », that « predestined, hitherto inaccessible realm of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages » that lies beyond anything that can be said, that is, in silence.

Talk talk talk, say the tongues, but only of course so long as until they achieve that silence of touch they look to share.

The irony then is that we did not talk enough. Though we talked a lot and agreed, i think, on what we might have to say, we spoke though only too briefly about how in the end we would say it. Perhaps because we do not share the same assumptions about what a text should look like, or perhaps because we too quickly assumed we shared the same understanding of what this text should do and how, or perhaps simply because we ran out of (or did not give ourselves enough) time, in the end, the text I produced in the process of translation did not, as we had planned, produce only moments of silence between our two voices, or between her original French and my English translation, but silenced her voice completely. Unable to find a way to integrate her voice and mine into the same text, or rather, unable to silence my own voice long enough to leave room for hers to take its place, I simply cut hers out completely. And so in turn she removes herself as a signator from this text. If this is perhaps an embarassingly masculine of me, and if therefore the friendship that our conversations were based risks being fractured by my decision to go ahead and publish a text on my own that we failed to produce collaboration, i’m willing to take that risk.

References

Walter Benjamin, « The Task of the Translator » in Illuminations. (transl) Harry Zohn, London : Fontana, 1992.

John Cage. Silence : lectures and writings. Middleton, Conn. : Wesleyan University Press, 1961.

Wasela Hiyate, « Jeanne Mance Park » in Anna Leventhal (ed.), The Art of Trespassing. Invisible publishing (2008).

Luce Irigaray. Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un. Paris : Editions du Minuit, 1977.

Lao-tzu Tao Te Ching. (transl) Victor H. Mair. Bantam Books 1990.

Robert Mazjels, City of Forgetting. Toronto : Mercury Press, 1997.

Gail Scott « In Conversation », in Lianne Moyes (ed.), Gail Scott : essays on her works. Toronto : Guernica, 2002.

— « My Montréal : Notes of an Anglo-Québécois Writer », in Brick 59 (Spring 1998); 4-9.

— Heroine. Toronto : Coach House Press, 1987.

— My Paris : a novel. Toronto : Mercury Press, 1999.

Library of Congress, Run on Berlin
Bank when War Declared
Some rights reserved.

Last month, the new head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mary Shapiro, promised U.S. Congress « to act aggressively to revitalize the embattled agency’s enforcement efforts » in order to protect investors’ interests and prevent scandals such as the Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. She argued that the SEC must be given the needed resources « to investigate and pursue those who cut corners, cheat investors and break the law » (2). Unfortunately, even with all of Mary Shapiro’s good intentions, the SEC will never be able to prevent all financial frauds and corporate scandals. Why? Because what the SEC can do is limited to tightening the screening of firms and investment funds, increasing the probability that a “thief” will be caught. Simply put, stronger law enforcement decreases the expected payoff of committing a crime. However, Bernard Madoff (and the people at Enron and WorldCom, for example) probably did not build their companies with the intention of stealing from investors. These perpetrators often behaved properly until something went wrong and decided (probably irrationally) to conceal it in their financial statements, sincerely believing they would make it up in the near future when returns or profits turned better. But this practice often becomes a self-reinforcing process of deceit as efforts to cover the previous period’s losses lead to a downward spiral, ultimately resulting in major corporate scandals.

Changing the relationship between a firm and its accounting auditor

There is a much better way to prevent Madoff-type Ponzi schemes and corporate scandals such as those of Enron and WorldCom. The key lies in the way auditing is done. Currently, all firms have an auditor that they usually deal with for long periods of time, likely due to the fact that these relationships evolve and create learning experiences that help managers increase their efficiency at running their businesses. This synergy raises productivity and long-term growth, and thus is good for the economy. However, that is what normally happens. Normality means that once in a while, there is going to be an outlier, and it is hard for the average investor or regulatory body to see it coming. Conflicts of interest can arise when the auditors of very large firms (like Arthur Andersen which audited both Enron and WorldCom) are paid millions of dollars per year in fees. Once in a while they might accept small irregularities to keep their important clients happy, especially if they think it will be corrected in the next period. In the case of Bernard Madoff, a three-person accounting firm was in charge of certifying his company’s books. Such a small accounting firm does not have any bargaining power and may have found it tempting to overlook discrepancies in the financial statements to ensure that their largest client would continue to retain their services.

So how do we prevent such scandals that create billions of dollars in losses, and damage investor confidence? The solution requires setting the accounting firms’ incentives appropriately to mitigate the conflicts of interest that currently exist. The intuition is simple: each institution involved with investors (i.e. stock-issuing companies, savings or investment funds (such as mutual or hedge funds), etc) should have to change their auditor every five years. At the end of a contract between a firm and an auditor, the company would have to get back into the pool of auditing agencies and choose another one. In this manner, the firm-auditor matches would stay efficient (i.e. the richest firms could still choose from the best accounting agencies, at higher fees). Furthermore, the new system would balance the incentives of both the company and the auditor correctly. Since another accounting firm would take over the work of the current auditor, each accounting firm would have a strong incentive to do its job properly. Consequently, this new system would be « self-regulatory », in the sense that it would monitor itself, with very little need for government intervention. The government could simply assist when a new auditor finds an inconsistency in the previous audited statements.

People invest their savings in stocks and various types of funds. They are at an informational disadvantage as to whether or not a firm and its auditor are acting appropriately, or if the investment fund and its auditor are running a Ponzi scheme à la Madoff. This proposed new system would ensure that auditors would have incentives to always stick to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to protect their reputation, reducing the likelihood of their cooperation with firms whose managers act unethically. More importantly, it would save the enormous cost on society that a Madoff or Enron-type scandal causes. Granted it would be a drastic and expensive change in the way business is conducted in the U.S.; however, changes of this magnitude occur only in tough times, which we are in now. Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University and author of the book “Irrational Exuberance” (3), claimed that « Financial innovation only comes in times of crisis. [...] We are in a revolutionary period of profound change. »(4) Indeed, we are.

References

(1) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29299931/
(2) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/01/15/sec-pick-vows-revitalie-agency/
(3) Shiller, Robert J., “Irrational Exuberance”, Princeton University Press, 2nd edition, 2005, 344 pages.
(4)http://business.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081001.wshiller1001/BNStory/Business/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20081001.wshiller1001

ricoeurian, capitalism, 2007
Certains droits réservés.

Worldwide healthcare has long been a central topic of debate. Core topics range from the lack of services in developing nations, the pitfalls of the private system of the United States, or the difficulties with public healthcare, such as in Canada. There are few countries, if any, that can boast of absolute satisfaction with their healthcare solution. It is this dissatisfaction that may have contributed to what is now being recognized as a widespread increase in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

What is CAM?

CAM includes diverse practices, products, and treatments that are not considered to be part of conventional medicine. Complementary medicines are used in conjunction with conventional approaches, while alternative practices are used alone, to substitute traditional treatment.

Traditionally, the concept of CAM evoked images of “new-aged” or “naturalistic” treatments. However, in today’s global playground, people are increasingly aware, and accepting, of different approaches to healthcare. Chiropractic care is an excellent example of a treatment “going mainstream”. The American Medical Association regarded chiropractic care as an unscientific cult, and an unethical approach to healthcare, until 1980 (1). Today, chiropractic care is one the most widely used alternative practices. Another poignant example is acupuncture. Rooted in traditional Eastern medicine, with a history that extends back thousands of years, acupuncture began gaining a foothold in North America approximately 30 years ago. Acupuncture is now a common and widely used complementary approach.

The field of CAM can be categorized into four domains: mind-body medicine, biologically- and body-based practices, and energy therapies. Mind-body medicine includes meditation, mental healing, art, dance, or music therapy, and patient support groups. The goal of mind-body medicine is to use the mind to influence symptoms and bodily functions. A biologically-based approach attempts to provide relief through natural substances such as herbal teas, vitamins, and specific foods. A body-based practice manipulates the body, such as in massage, or chiropractic medicine. Finally, energy therapies are based on the theory that the body is surrounded by energy, and can therefore be altered by therapeutic touch or magnetic fields.

Although some of those techniques have been integrated into mainstream medicine, others remain largely isolated. Chiropractic care, acupuncture, hypnosis, and massage therapy remain among the most widely employed methods, recognized to varying degrees under healthcare and private insurance. By contrast, a great deal of controversy surrounds the use of therapeutic touch or energy fields, practices that have yet to be empirically validated.

Prevalent forms of CAM

Among the most mainstream forms of CAM are hypnotherapy, chiropractic care, massage therapy, and acupuncture. Hypnotherapy, a mind-body practice, has been found to be an effective analgesic for children as well as adults, and several scientific journals are dedicated to empirical research on the use and practice of hypnotherapy. As children are generally more hypnotizable than adults, the use of pediatric hypnosis has been widely researched. Used as an adjunct treatment, hypnosis has been shown to effectively reduce pain associated with medical procedures (specifically lumbar puncture and bone marrow aspiration in pediatric cancer patients), as well as postoperative pain and chronic headache (2). Additional disorders responsive to pediatric hypnosis include anxiety, phobias, bedwetting, diabetes, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, among others. As for adults, a recent study on chronic pain in individuals with disabilities showed that hypnotic analgesia led to significant decreases in reported pain intensity over a 12 month period with 20 % of patients reporting clinically significant, long-lasting reductions in daily pain (3). In addition, hypnosis has also been effective in obstetrics (specifically labor and delivery). Criticisms of hypnosis mainly focus on the lack of studies comparing hypnosis to a credible placebo or current effective treatments. Without this research, it is difficult to ascertain overall efficacy of hypnosis as a pain reliever.

Back pain affects approximately 60-80 % of individuals at some point in their lives, and chiropractic care has emerged as an efficient, non-pharmacological solution. Chiropractic care, a body-based practice, is potentially the most widely used and accepted form of CAM. Chiropractic, like medicine, dentistry, or psychology, is a self-governing profession, adhering to strict licensing programs, regulations, and disciplinary action. These stringent regulations reflect the seriousness of the practice itself. Chiropractic often involves spinal manipulation with potentially severe complications such as stroke, neurological impairments, soreness, and tightness in the manipulated area. The risks of severe complications with spinal manipulations are extremely rare, and estimated at 0.5 to 2 incidents per million treatments resulting in stroke. Of these, one third will recover fully within a short period. However one third will be fatal, resulting in approximately 12 deaths per year in the US (4). In addition, relatively mild negative reactions to chiropractic are estimated to occur in 30 to 61 % of patients (5). Nonetheless, recent decision analyses examining the best non-surgical neck-pain treatment concluded little benefit or risk discrepancy between the pharmacological approach of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), chiropractic manual therapy, and prescribed exercise (6). In summary, chiropractic is a regulated practice with clear risks and benefits associated with treatment, but despite controversy, associated risks do not appear to be more severe than those of substitute treatment options.

Acupuncture, the process of inserting fine filiform needles into strategic body points, is part of traditional Chinese medicine and pain relief. However, a review of research on acupuncture and pain treatment was unable to conclude that acupuncture was more effective than a placebo, and provided only limited evidence that acupuncture was better than no treatment (7). There is some evidence in support of acupuncture, and National Institute of Health remarked that the potential deleterious side effects associated with acupuncture may be significantly less than pharmacological options (8). Regardless, the contradictions in the research and ambiguity surrounding the effectiveness of acupuncture highlight the need for additional research with strong methodologies to clarify the issue of efficacy.

Who uses CAM?

Recent numbers indicate 35 % of adults in the United States use some form of CAM (9). In Europe, the Forum for Complementary and Alternative Medicine was created in 2004 to address the increasing percentage of individuals using CAM and the lack of uniformity in regulations throughout the European Union (10). This rising interest worldwide certainly represents a movement towards a holistic approach to healthcare, and perhaps dissatisfaction with the current healthcare options.

In North America, health coverage legislation differs between states, influencing the distribution of CAM usage. However, recent policy shifts addressing private health coverage and health insurance for senior citizens reveals a trend towards non-pharmaceutical approaches gaining legal ground. Internationally, similar policy changes are being evaluated to contend with the increased demand for complementary and alternative medicine.

Why CAM?

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine surveyed users with the goal of examining reasons for the recent increase in interest. The statement “CAM would improve health when used in combination with conventional medical treatments” was endorsed by 55 % of those surveyed. Half indicated that they thought CAM would be interesting to try. Approximately 25 % of the sample reported that they turned to CAM when conventional medical treatments were inefficient, or when suggested by their medical professional. Finally, the statement that “conventional medical treatments are too expensive” was endorsed by 13 % of the sample (11). In general, these results identify improving personal health and curiosity about unique approaches as the main reasons for use.

General dissatisfaction with global healthcare systems is a reality. A universal shortage of qualified doctors and a similar nursing shortage is affecting healthcare worldwide. In most industrialized nations, emergency wait times are often excessive, and quality of care suffers. Additionally, there is a growing awareness of the potentially deleterious side effects of pharmacological approaches, and growing interest in alternative options. These factors are among those contributing to the increased prevalence of complementary and alternative medicine.

Future directions in CAM research

Given the variations in CAM coverage and use worldwide, increased efforts should be taken to ensure empirically supported non-pharmaceutical treatment options are uniformly available. This requires further research to differentiate between the useful and ineffective, or potentially harmful forms of complementary and alternative medicine. As a field, non-pharmaceutical medicine requires updated government legislation regulating and financially covering non-traditional practices that are empirically demonstrated to be as effective as their pharmacological counterparts, giving the individual greater freedom in their medical decision making. However, given the wide discrepancies between treatment efficacies, consulting with a health care professional prior to beginning any novel treatment is prudent.

References

(1) Cherkin, Dan. AMA policy on chiropractic. American Journal of Public Health, 79.11 (1989): 1569-1570.
(2) Neron, Sylvain, and Randolph Stephenson. “Effectiveness of Hypnotherapy with Cancer Patients’ Trajectory: Emesis, Acute Pain, and Analgesia and Anxiolysis in Procedures”. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 55.3 (2007): 336-354.
(3) Jensen, Mark P., Joseph Barber, Marisol A. Hanley, Joyce E. Engel, Joan M. Romano, Diana D. Cardenas, George H. Kraft, Amy J.Hoffman, and David R. Patterson “Long-Term Outcome of Hypnotic-Analgesia Treatment for Chronic Pain in Persons with Disabilities”. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 56.2 (2008):156–169.
(4) What are the Risk of Chiropractic Neck Treatments? William J. Lauretti. September 17, 2008. <http://www.chiro.org/chimages/chiropage/cva-1.html>.
(5) Ernst, Edzard. “Adverse effects of spinal manipulation: a systematic review”. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 100.7 (2007):330-338.
(6) Van der Velde, Gabrielle, Sheilah Hogg-Johnson, Ahmed M. Bayoumi, David J. Cassidy, Pierre Côte, Eleanor Boyle, Hilary Llewellyn-Thomas, Stella Chan, Peter Subrata, Jan L. Hoving, Eric Hurwitz, Claire Bombardier, and Murray Krahn. “Identifying the Best Treatment Among Common Nonsurgical Neck Pain Treatments: A Decision Analysis”. European Spine Journal, 17.1 (2008): 184-191.
(7) Ezzo, Jeanette, Brian Berman, Victoria A. Hadhazy, Alejandro R. Jadad, Lixing Lao, and Betsy B. Singh. “Is acupuncture effective for the treatment of chronic pain? A systematic review”. Pain, 86.3, (2000): 217-225.
(8) Sham Acupuncture. E Not Alone. 23 October 2008 <http://www.enotalone.com/article/9160.html>.
(9) Tindle, Hilary A., Roger B. Davis, Russell S. Phillips, and David M. Eisenberg. “Trends in use of complementary and alternative medicine by US adults: 1997-2002”. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 11.1 (2005): 42-49.
(10) Declaration of the European Platform/Forum for CAM/NCM. European Forum for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 17 August 2008 < http://cam.epha.org/>.
(11) The Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 4 December 2008. <http://nccam.nih.gov/news/camsurvey_fs1.htm#reason>

Freeparking, backyard view through a viewfinder, 2007
Certains droits réservés.

L’agent Roger Ferris (l’excellent Leonardo DiCaprio) est en mission depuis longtemps déjà dans plusieurs pays du Moyen-Orient. Il est téléguidé dans ses activités par Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe, un habitué des films de Scott), un ponte préretraité de la CIA, qui, de sa maison cossue des États-Unis, lui dicte ses consignes par téléphone. Afin de piéger un commanditaire d’actes terroristes, Ferris doit également demander l’aide de l’omnipotent directeur des renseignements jordaniens, Hani Salaam (Mark Strong). Mais Ferris se rend rapidement compte qu’il ne peut faire confiance à personne; pas plus à ses indicateurs qu’à ses supérieurs hiérarchiques, qui le manipulent selon leurs intérêts et leurs tactiques politiques. Entre compromis et compromissions, manipulations, faux-semblants, abus de pouvoir, désinformation et intrigues politiques, Body of lies – dont le titre est d’ailleurs très judicieux – s’avère être un savant dosage entre réflexion politique et film d’action.

Un sujet de plus en plus prisé au cinéma

À une époque où l’interventionnisme (et l’enlisement) américain dans certaines régions du monde est de plus en plus critiqué par certains États et associations de toutes sortes, il apparaît normal que le sujet inspire de multiples adaptations cinématographiques. Syriana (Stephen Gaghan, 2005) a le mérite d’être le premier film à effectuer à la fois un réquisitoire contre les intrigues américaines au Moyen-Orient et à nous plonger dans les arcanes de la guerre du pétrole et des collusions entre intérêts politiques et intérêts économiques. The Kingdom (Peter Berg, 2006) semble s’être, a contrario, complètement emmêlé les pinceaux. Hormis quelques éléments intéressants (régime saoudien corrompu, société apathique et muselée par la loi du silence), le film ne tient nullement la route du fait d’un scénario invraisemblable: comment une équipe du FBI peut-elle être dépêchée si rapidement dans un pays fermé au monde extérieur? Comment une femme peut-elle y figurer alors même que les femmes saoudiennes sont inexistantes au Royaume des Saoud? Prétendant vouloir adresser un message d’espoir et expliquer que l’Arabie Saoudite et les États-Unis (deux États en froid depuis les attentats du 11 septembre 2001) peuvent à nouveau communiquer, le réalisateur Peter Berg a oublié de questionner le fond du problème, c’est-à-dire la présence américaine au Moyen-Orient. Son film se limite à des scènes de fusillades et d’explosions spectaculaires et sombre dans un manichéisme outrancier (les bons dégomment les méchants) truffé de clichés racistes et de propagande anti-terroriste(2).

Plusieurs pistes de lecture

Dans une région du monde marquée par une présence américaine de longue date et en bute à la montée de mouvements islamistes contestataires, il devient de plus en plus difficile de dissocier les innombrables protagonistes d’un monde en pleine ébullition politique, quel que soit le camp auquel ces protagonistes appartiennent. Leur imbrication est de plus en plus poussée. Dans Body of lies,Ridley Scott, réalisateur du film culte Blade Runner,et son scénariste William Monahan (oscarisé pour le scénario de The departed de Scorsese) viennent nous rappeler que les choses ne sont pas si simples et qu’il convient de remettre en question deux théories pour le moins réductrices: celle des universalistes qui pensent que la démocratie peut être implantée partout dans le monde, indépendamment de tout contexte, et celle des culturalistes et de leur chef de file, Samuel Huntington(3), qui affirment que la démocratie est l’apanage exclusif des sociétés occidentales et qu’elle ne peut nullement être appliquée dans des régions comme l’Afrique ou le Moyen-Orient.

En 1992, le philosophe et politologue américain Francis Fukuyama suscitait la polémique avec sa théorie sur la fin de l’histoire(4). Dans un essai controversé intitulé La fin de l’histoire et le dernier homme(5), il affirme que la chute du Mur de Berlin et l’éclatement de l’Union soviétique marquent la victoire finale de la démocratie libérale sur les autres régimes politiques et, par là, l’avènement de la paix perpétuelle et la fin de l’histoire telle que l’humanité l’a connue auparavant. Signifiant ainsi que l’humanité aurait atteint un stade final. Aussi, si certaines dictatures persistent, cela n’empêcherait pas, à terme, à la démocratie libérale de s’imposer partout comme le régime le plus conforme à la nature de l’homme. Fukuyama s’exprime en ces termes: «le triomphe de l’Occident […] éclate dans le fait que tout système viable qui puisse se substituer au libéralisme occidental a été totalement discrédité»(6). Or, les années post-Guerre froide, marquées par de nombreux conflits internationaux (Irak, Afghanistan, Kosovo, etc.), ont clairement démontré le caractère erroné de la théorie de Fukuyama, taxée d’idéologique étant donné le rapprochement de ce dernier avec le Pentagone. Des films comme Body of lies viennent donc rappeler que le problème de la démocratie, en ce qui concerne notamment les pays arabes du Moyen-Orient, est mal posé dès le départ. Car les sociétés arabes sont structurellement différentes des sociétés occidentales, et appliquer des grilles d’analyse classiques à l’étude de celles-ci ainsi qu’à celle de leurs systèmes politiques ne fonctionne pas.

Le film postule intelligemment qu’on ne peut traiter avec les peuples de la région sans connaître leurs us et coutumes et, par extension, que les États-Unis mènent des actions dans une région qu’ils ne connaissent pas du tout. C’est ainsi que l’agent Hoffman dicte à son agent des conduites à adopter sans tenir compte des réalités du terrain. Ce dernier, vu les exigences de son travail, se voit dans l’obligation d’apprendre l’arabe, de porter la barbe et tente du mieux qu’il le peut de se fondre dans la masse. Se développe alors une amitié entre lui et une autochtone. Il ne faut point voir en cela une constante d’un film qui veut se vendre mais, au contraire, l’argument principal du film: et si nous tentions de communiquer? Cette assertion a d’autant plus d’impact lors du dernier dialogue du film lorsque l’agent Ferris déclare à son supérieur qu’il compte raccrocher, mais rester encore quelques temps au Moyen-Orient. Ce dernier rétorque alors: «Au Moyen-Orient? Mais c’est nul le Moyen-Orient». Et DiCaprio de répondre: «Justement, c’est ça le problème».

Le film de Ridley Scott est une excellente leçon contre la dictature de la pensée unique et des vérités définitives.

Notes

(1) Né en 1950, David R. Ignatius est un grand journaliste américain. Après être passé par le Washington Monthly et le Wall Street Journal, il travaille au Washington Post depuis 1986. Il est également l’auteur de romans d’espionnage dont Body of lies (paru en 2007), inspiré de ses longues années de correspondance au Moyen-Orient.
(2) Citons également d’autres films parus ces dernières années et traitant de près ou de loin de la Guerre en Irak: Dans la vallée d’Elah (Paul Haggis, 2005), Lions for lambs (Robert Redford, 2007), Battle for Haditha (Nick Broomfield, 2007), Redacted (Brian De Palma, 2007), Grace is gone (James C. Strouse, 2007), Stop-Loss (Kimberly Peirce, 2008), Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008), etc.
(3) Professeur de sciences politiques à l’Université de Harvard, Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008) est l’auteur d’un ouvrage fort controversé, Le choc des civilisations («The clash of civilizations», 1996), dans lequel il opère une lecture identitaire des conflits. Depuis la fin de la Guerre froide, ces derniers seraient «culturels». Huntington donne appui à ce point de vue en effectuant l’énumération de divers conflits actuels ou récents: Tchétchènes musulmans contre Russes orthodoxes, musulmans contre chrétiens au Liban, musulmans contre Serbes en Bosnie, etc. Huntington voit également dans les actions terroristes d’Al-Qaïda une lutte à finir entre le monde musulman et le monde occidental. Ses thèses serviront d’ailleurs de fondement à l’interventionnisme américain dans le monde. Depuis les attentats du 11 septembre 2001, il est considéré comme un visionnaire dans certains milieux américains. Son erreur principale fut d’analyser les interactions culturelles uniquement dans des contextes de guerre et d’oublier que les clivages culturels masquent dans les faits des conflits politiques.
(4) La fin de l’histoire est un concept qui apparaît d’abord dans La phénoménologie de l’esprit (1807)de Hegel. Il a par la suite été réinterprété au XXème siècle par des philosophes comme Alexandre Kojève ou Jean-François Lyotard (théorie de la post-modernité). L’idée fut surtout remise à l’ordre du jour après la chute du Mur de Berlin par Francis Fukuyama et vivement critiquée par nombreux penseurs, Jacques Derrida notamment.
(5) Paru en 1992, cet ouvrage («The end of story and the last man») reprend et développe un article paru précédemment dans la revue américaine The National Interest et intitulé «The end of story?».
(6) NORMIER, Marjolaine, «L’homme qui prédisait «la fin de l’histoire». http://www.politis.fr/L-homme-qui-predisait-la-fin-de-l,4238.html. Consulté le 24 juillet 2008.

Arimoore, Fetus, 2006
Certains droits réservés.

Giant canyons and networks of gullies mark Mars’ land surface, resembling the liquid water landscape features here on Earth. Martian topology thus bears historical traces of large quantities of water, now gone. Today, Mars’ cold, dry climate prevents any liquid water from existing on the surface (1). The average atmospheric water content is only about one thousand of that on Earth and the Martian mean global temperature is approximately -77 degrees Celsius – well below the freezing point of water. Although water ice exists in the polar regions of Mars, the quantity is negligible compared to the size of the oceans that once carved the Martian landscape. Since water is no longer present on the surface of the planet, scientists are now looking underground for answers. Ongoing mapping of the mineral content in the Martian subsurface could reveal possible traces of water on Mars. Finding out what happened to all that water could help shed light onto the history of the Martian climate, and more broadly, Martian life forms. Indeed, if the planet was wetter and warmer, it may have been more hospitable to microorganisms.

Exploring the underground

Scientists are gathering information about Martian soil composition to better understand the history of water on Mars. Areas with high subsurface concentrations of hydrogen and water soluble minerals can lead to discoveries of large underground water reservoirs. To understand this concentration of different elements in the soil, we must necessarily look at incoming and outgoing particles.

Cosmic particles originate from various sources in the universe, including the sun, remote stars and particle collisions with interstellar gas (3). They are present just about everywhere in the universe and strike anything that comes their way.

In the case of Mars, incoming cosmic particles face a thin atmosphere and a very weak magnetic field. While on Earth, our magnetic field and dense atmosphere slows down the incoming particles, the low disturbance on Mars allows them to reach the ground with original speed. At such high speeds, incoming particles interact with the atoms about one meter underground (4). The interaction produces outgoing particles, gamma-rays and neutrons, that carry energies that are unique to the soil composition. These specific gamma-ray and neutron energies help to extract concentrations of different elements in the Martian soil. By studying these particles scientists can explore hidden reservoirs and the history of Mars’ climate.

Catching recoiling particles

The exploration uses the satellite 2001 Mars Odyssey and particle detectors, originally developed for nuclear physics experiments. The detectors take the role of a camera to capture images of Mars. The Odyssey project is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, designed to make robotic explorations of Mars (5). The satellite has been orbiting Mars since October 2001 at a height near 400 kilometers. On board the orbiter are three experiments, one of which is called the Gamma Rays Spectrometer (GRS). The purpose of GRS is to map the Martian subsurface soil composition, including the contents of hydrogen and water soluble minerals. Given that the GRS data are sensitive to chlorine concentrations, the chlorine data may confirm past water reservoirs that collected salt.

The GRS system is equipped with three detector types that initially were developed for Nuclear physics experiments (4). These detectors are capable of capturing incident recoiling gamma-rays and neutrons from cosmic particle collisions in the Martian subsurface. The GRS instruments also measure the neutron and gamma-ray energies and therefore provide the neutron and gamma-ray intensity for different particle energies. Given the unique energy levels for different elements, the GRS data are used to deduce the abundance and ratios of different elements in the subsurface. The 2001 Mars Odyssey orbits the entire planet, and thus provides a global map of Mars’ soil composition.

By 2002, less than a year after the orbiter had arrived at Mars, the Odyssey experiments had gathered enough data to provide an almost complete global map of the hydrogen content in the top meter of the Martian soil (6). Assuming that hydrogen is present in the form of water molecules, these results confirmed vast amounts of water ice buried beneath the surface in the polar regions. In January 2007, the GRS experiment released maps of hydrogen, silicon, chlorine, potassium, iron, and thorium concentrations in the Martian subsurface in the low and mid-latitude regions (2). These data helped narrow down hypotheses of different processes that affected the planet.

Future investigations into Mars’ past

The GRS experiment has provided detailed mapping of the water content in the Martian soil, continues to gather data and to publish improved resolutions. The GRS data are analyzed by scientists who test theories of how different processes have evolved on the planet. There are other satellites orbiting Mars that conduct experiments to gather data of the subsurface. One of those is the Mars Express Orbiter which is part of the European Space Agency’s effort to monitor the planet. The Express orbiter is equipped with radar instruments that are designed to measure the distribution of liquid and frozen water down to five kilometers below the surface. The Express data could lead to exciting discoveries of underground water reservoirs, providing a window into the evolution of Mars’ landscape and perhaps even ancient forms of life.

References

(1)Jakosky, Bruce M., and Michael T. Mellon. “Water on Mars.” Physics Today 57. 6 (2004): 71-76.
(2) Boynton, W. V. et al. “Concentration of H, Si, Cl, K, Fe, and Th in the low- and mid-latitude regions of Mars.” Journal of Geophysical Research 112. E12S99 (2007).
(3) Yao, W. M. et al. “Review of Particle Physics.” Journal of Physics G33. (2007). 20 August 2008 <http://pdg.lbl.gov/>.
(4)Gamma Ray Spectrometer Home Page. 31 Jan. 2008. The University of Arizona. 20 August 2008 <http://grs.lpl.arizona.edu/home.jsp>.
(5)NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Home Page. 20 August 2008. NASA. 20 August 2008 <http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/>.
(6) Bell, Jim. “Tip of the Martian Iceberg?” Science 297. 7 (2002): 60-61.; Mitrofanov, I. et al. “Maps of Subsurface Hydrogen from the High Energy Neutron Detector, Mars Odyssey.” Science 297. 7 (2002): 78-81.; Boynton, W. V. et al. “Distribution of Hydrogen in the Near Surface of Mars: Evidence for Subsurface Ice Deposits.” Science 297. 7 (2002): 81-85.

* Ryan T. Swihart is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at Lehman College, City University of New York (CUNY).

Quasimondo, Surface Closeup, 2009
Certains droits réservés.

In 2009 a conservative viewer in an art museum scoffs at the pile of aluminum cans, the gendered laser light show and the canvas painted all in white and moves quickly on to the real art, which will of course include nineteenth century Impressionist works. It was not always so. A little over a century ago Impressionism was something of an aesthetic scandal in its own right. American viewers saw works by Monet et al. as unsettling, radical departures from accepted practices and expectations. To some critics they were hardly art at all. Revisiting that moment can augment our thinking about aesthetic problems still with us today. It also might remind us how artistic rebellion and public resistance can, over time, yield new consensus about what is acceptable and what is beautiful.

Several arguments animated complaints about Impressionism as it was understood by its American audiences and critics (1). Henry James, writing for the New York Tribune, regretted what he saw as the retreat from the “good old rules that decree that beauty is beauty and ugliness, ugliness” (2). American painter George Inness disparaged the Impressionists’ “scientific tendency to ignore the reality of the unseen” and their mistaken judgment that “the material is the real” (3). This older understanding of the purpose of art insisted that the artist’s duty was to work from nature but to render a higher, necessarily artificial, beauty, not simply to reproduce raw nature as it appeared to the senses. On the other hand, Impressionist paintings’ unconventional coloring provoked accusations that practitioners of the form willfully and brashly distorted nature rather than faithfully representing it as had earlier French landscapists. Impressionists were criticized both for being too real and for not being real enough.

Another strain of disapproval focused on the unfinished and rough nature of impressionist works, which appeared to critics more like preliminary sketches than completed paintings. Impressionism looked like it had been too easy. The physical process of creation seemed too crudely evident. “What new dogma is this, then, that so long as color is heaped on in a vigorous manner, a picture must be accepted as complete, however crude and raw it may seem, however absolute is the evidence that the artist stopped before he had done?” asked the editors of Appleton’s in 1878 (4). In a genuine, finished painting, the author continued, “one who looks at it sees textures, not paint, force by virtue of completeness and not by ruggedness, things and not guesses at things” (5).

Not just the concern of learned critics, Impressionism quickly made its way into more general public discourse. Satire aimed at the Impressionists and their works was scattered liberally throughout the newspaper pages of the 1880s and 1890s, and even lingered into the first years of the twentieth century. This body of work included cartoons, comical fictional tales and even a good deal of poetry. The main themes included the perceived conceitedness or presumption of impressionist painters, the inexact nature of their images, their unorthodox use of color, and their anti-establishment attitudes toward the critical and professional community. Almost all of these are present in an “Impressionist Poem,” submitted first to the New York Sun in 1886 and then picked up and reprinted around the country:

Languid I lie on the peachblow grass,
Watching the cadmium cloudlets pass;
Shafts from the creamy sun descending
Break and spatter with glinting grace
Mountains, in no particular place
Starting or ending.

Wrapped in a rainbow colored fog
Sleeps the land; and each pool and bog
Shines like the skin of a dolphin dying.
Not a tree but is caught and kissed,
In an pallid absinthe mist,
Nimbus like lying…

Then will the critics, long color blind,
And the art world, ages and ages behind,
Hail, as wondrous rich accessions,
Human figures devoid of bones,
All earth’s colors, without the tones –
In short, impressions (6).

Another amateur poet focused later more specifically on the unorthodox color choices of the impressionists in her “Impressionist’s Invitation:”

Come out, my love, and stroll with me
Across the cobalt dunes;
We’ll sit beside the sunset sea
That green-and-grayly croons,
That dies along the madder sands
In lines of scumbled foam;
And then we’ll clasp our umber hands,
And mauvely wander home (7).

“Can you give me any good reasons for liking impressionist pictures?” asked a widely published joke. “Yes, indeed; they can be hung either side up with equally good effect” (8). (Ah, 19th century humor…) Yet another: “Mr. Impressionist—‘That’s my last there on the easel. Now there is a picture, Squibs.’ Squibs—‘Yes, so it is. I can tell that by the frame’” (9).

More serious, perhaps, was humor that pointed to the impressionist aesthetic’s tendency to undermine critical evaluation and confuse traditional standards of judgment, even for those who considered themselves cultured, capable observers of art. Along these lines, critics and reviewers often complained that advocates of Impressionism condemned pictures too strictly verisimilar as unsophisticated and outdated. In the Boston Transcript and elsewhere we find this sketch: “Connoisseur—‘It sounds mean to repeat it, but he declared your landscape did not look a bit like nature.’ Artist—‘Ah, that was high praise! The true Impressionist does not have to indulge in servile imitation of the object he depicts’” (10). In a longer piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer a proud amateur collector’s satisfaction slowly deflates as his more up-to-date friend explains that his newest acquisition fails because all its elements are immediately recognizable:

Be calm, Blotterwink [the sophisticated comrade remarks]. You have been taken in. Why, man, where have you been living that you can’t tell a real picture when you see it? You have admitted that the cows look like cows and the trees like trees. . . . Then, look at that sunset. Why, that’s the kind of sunset you see every day. It’s yellow, pink and red. It is not brown.
I don’t believe I ever saw a brown sunset, said Blotterwink.
Of course not; nobody ever did. That’s where the art is exhibited. I’ll take you somewhere and let you buy a picture that will keep you wondering for a week whether it’s a house on fire or a charge of heavy dragoons. When you find out I’ll come and congratulate you (11).

Many critics found this sort of situation all too accurate but not at all funny. To Royal Cortissoz, the astute and long-time art critic for the New York Tribune, the Impressionists’ insistence that the burden of explanation rested no longer with the artist but with the viewer appeared more like a shirking of duty than an interesting adventure. In 1894 he recalled that

Rousseau, Corot and Millet . . . would paint in their own ways, they would give themselves free swing, but the first intention of their work would be to reproduce nature with truth. The impressionist’s intention is somewhat the same, but he makes the following distinction. “This is as I see nature,” he declares. “You may tell me that that is an oak, and that those flowers are daisies. Yonder bush may be one of roses. Mais que voulez-vous? I am no maker of catalogues. I do not pretend to tell you just what is there. I tell you what I see there, and what I see is so much tone. I leave it to your cleverness to translate my tone, my beautiful pigments, back to natural facts. Presto!” . . . It marks a step in the . . . direction of personality resting satisfied with its own outlook (12).

Such contributions to the discourse on modern art, whether meant to be amusing or not, point to a threatening shift in the relation of the public to cultural objects and to the idea of cultural refinement as accessible, permanent, and therefore valuable. These episodes in print suggest a situation in which the achievement of cultural sophistication or literacy might be only temporary, that the realm of aesthetic judgment and appreciation could be as changeable as that of politics or fashion. So what was the use of educating oneself anyway?

The discomfort many cultural commentators were just beginning to feel with Impressionism was colored by a sense of betrayal: just as Americans were rising toward the cultural standards set by Europeans it seemed that the rules were changing suddenly and even irrationally. Americans interested in cultural refinement had gladly reverenced the Renaissance after it was pointed out to them that they should; they had read their John Ruskin and then their Matthew Arnold; they had learned to discern an Ingres from a David; they had followed the rise and decline of the Munich school; they had enshrined serene images by Puvis de Chavannes in their own public buildings; and they had absorbed the idea that the technical aspects of art were ever evolving toward higher planes of perfection. Then they began abruptly to hear and read that the old ways needed overthrowing, that what was needed was a revolution in seeing and painting, that light itself was now to be the primary protagonist in pictures, that immediate impressions dashed off in an afternoon were to be privileged over carefully wrought, highly finished compositions, that historical subject matter was taboo.

The stirrings of uneasiness among those skeptical of such new developments and theories about visual art would seem prophetic in future years, as the works and the celebrity of full-fledged modernists came to dominate the art world before WWI. For culturally interested Americans of the 1880s the suggestion that a cult of primitivism would soon arrive along with advocacy for a complete abandonment of traditional representation would have sounded terrifying but unlikely, and yet this is just what they would face in the first years of the twentieth century. When such developments achieved their full force, a discourse of protection would become more vigorously conservative than those of the nineteenth century by expressing more frankly suspicion about the idea that cultural progress had to be animated by outright rebellion against the past.

The uneven reception of Impressionism and its later privileged position in the canon of Western painting might leave us with several things to think about. The confused and uncertain story of Impressionism’s arrival here should be taken as a reminder to remain humble but alert. Humble in our recognition of our relative ignorance on any given topic; alert because we do in fact believe that some suspicion in the face of new forms is healthy both for viewers and for art. In 2009 it seems more difficult than ever to evaluate new aesthetic ideas and presentations because they seem to be coming at us so quickly. We should remember we are not the first to feel this. We should remember that past eras were no simpler or easy to interpret for those who lived through them. We can, I think, nurture both an open mind and a critical eye, doing our best to walk the fine line between stubbornness and gullibility. Finally, what we see looking at the long history of the Impressionists from our perch in the twenty-first century is that, for all their austere and forbidding theoretical rhetoric, artistic ideas, like other ideas, must in the end submit to a certain rough democracy of taste.

References

(1) William Gerdts, in American Impressionism(New York: Artabras, 1984), page 30, has noted in a detailed discussion how “American critical evaluation of the [Impressionist] movement was confounded by indecision as to exactly what Impressionism was.”
(2) James, Henry. “Parisian Festivity.” New York Tribune. 13 May 1876. As quoted in Gerdts, American Impressionism, 30.
(3) Inness, George. “Mr. Inness on Art-Matters.” Art Journal. Vol. 5 (1879): 374-77. As quoted in Gerdts, American Impressionism, 30.
(4) “Editor’s Table.” Appleton’s Journal. Vol. 5 (Aug 1878): 185-86. As quoted in Gerdts, American Impressionism, 44.
(5) “Editor’s Table.” Appleton’s Journal. Vol. 5 (Aug 1878): 185-86. As quoted in Gerdts, American Impressionism, 44.
(6) Tyrell, Henry. “Impressionist Poems.” Dallas Morning News. 27 June 1886. Vol. 5, AHN. Attributed to the New York Sun.
(7) Baker, Mercy E. “An Impressionist’s Invitation.” Fort Worth Morning Register. 3 Jan 1902. Vol. 7, AHN. Attributed to January 1902 issue of Harpers Magazine.
(8) Santa Fe Daily New Mexican. 7 Feb 1895. Vol. 3, AHN.
(9) Duluth News-Tribune. 15 April 1896. Vol. 3, AHN. Attributed to Harlem Life.
(10) “The Impressionist.” Fort Worth Morning Register. 19 Nov 1899. Vol. 13, AHN. Attributed to the Boston Transcript.
(11) “His Wrong Ideas of Art; Liked Picture But It Was Too Far Removed from Impressionist School.” Philadelphia Inquirer. 31 July 1898. Vol. 10, AHN.
(12) Cortissoz, Royal. “Egotism in Contemporary Art.” Atlantic Monthly. Vol. 73, No. 439 (May 1894): 647, C-MOA. This would become an even more contentious matter in the coming decade, when modern artists would be increasingly accused of charlatanry and fakery – the idea being that they just tossed some paint at the canvas and then convinced the public that what resulted was fine art if only the public were sophisticated enough to understand.

Eflon, Foreshadowing, 2009
Certains droits réservés.

Since being sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama’s main focus has been to finish preparing a massive fiscal ‘stimulus’ package in hopes that it will help the U.S. out of one of the worst recession in decades, one that is looking dangerously like the Japanese experience of the 1990s – a bubble burst followed by a decade-long of depression economics. As a result, some important issues are left aside at the moment, so that efforts are concentrated on restoring confidence in financial markets. But the Obama administration will have much more on its agenda for the next four years: if they are able to stop this self-reinforcing downward spiral, the new administration will have to deal with several important issues, especially health care reforms, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and new financial regulations. The first two issues have been in the air for a certain time, but the latter wasn’t a problem until the current financial crisis – in fact, the deregulation of financial markets during the 1990s was seen by many as a powerful engine capable of absorbing shocks while delivering long-term economic growth. Now, with what has happened with the U.S. financial system, people are advocating that strict policies should come in place to regulate financial markets so that a crisis like the current one won’t happen again. Institutions that act like banks need to be regulated like banks, and risks must be priced appropriately by unbiased, highly knowledgeable, and well-informed credit rating agencies. These credit rating firms, like Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch, were hardly criticized by the U.S. Congress last October for their role in the financial mess, i.e. by failing to give the appropriate credit ratings to risky assets like securities backed by subprime mortgages.

Why did the credit rating agencies fail to assess risk properly?

There are a few relatively simple explanations for that. First, these agencies are paid by the security issuers; so it is understandable that once in a while, the interests of these agencies might come before the ones of the investors. On the other hand, Mr. Robert Rosenkranz, chairman and CEO of Delphi Financial Group, states in a very interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal that it is not surprising at all that these agencies wrongly assessed the risks of trillions of bonds backed by mortgages (1). « Rating agencies employ quite ordinary mortals to analyze the credit risk of bonds, just as firms like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch employ quite ordinary mortals to analyze the outlook for stocks. No one is shocked when equity analysts’ recommendations don’t pan out. Why should we expect any more of the rating agencies? » Quite true. And as Mr. Rosenkranz further says, these ratings determine (by law) how much capital regulated institutions need in order to own the bonds. So from here we can finish up the math: safe securities mean high ratings, and high ratings mean low capital requirements. So when risky assets (let’s say a bundle of subprime mortgages) are assigned high ratings, this implies strong demand for them (investors think there are safe). Regulated financial institutions invested massively in these assets, with very low capital required in order to own these fixed-income securities. Now when subprime borrowers start defaulting on their mortgage payments, the banks don’t have enough capital to back up their obligations.

What Mr. Rosenkranz is proposing is to change how the credit ratings are set. Basically, he states that the market should determine them, not the rating agencies: « The amount of capital required to hold a fixed-income security should be determined not by a rating but by its yield, expressed as a spread over Treasuries. The higher the spread, the riskier the market has determined the asset to be, and more capital should be required to hold it. » He finally argues that the credit rating agencies should still be out there, but only producing « Consumer Reports », i.e. to give advice on which assets are safe or not. It is strictly better than what we have now, since it assesses the rating agencies’ incentives correctly: institutions or investors will buy their reports only if they are actually good at pricing the risks, meaning that these rating agencies will feel the benefits, but also the costs of their actions.

Is this enough to prevent another financial crisis?

Even if it is better than our current rating system, it is not sure whether it is enough to prevent the financial markets from going through other crises. It is widely known that financial markets have had speculative bubbles, especially in the stock markets. As stated above by Mr. Rosenkranz, there are firms like Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch that employ financial analysts whose jobs are to appropriately value companies that are listed on different stock exchanges; simply put, they produce « Consumer Reports » to investors. But this did not stop the technology-stocks bubble of the 1990s; in fact, it may even have exacerbated it because of analysts’ overvaluation of stocks. Herd behavior and feedback loops are common in the financial markets, so letting the markets decide the yields of fixed-income securities will not prevent irrational exuberance.

Another important issue about the proposition of Mr. Rosenkranz is the influence of big investors who can manipulate the market for a short period of time. Let’s say that the market sets the yields on fixed-income securities, as described in the proposition above. Moreover, let’s assume that a small bank has invested in some risky assets, and for some reason sees its capital reserves decrease suddenly; in that case, what will prevent institutions like hedge funds to « force » a run on the bank by manipulating the bond market and shorting the bank’s stock? Paul Krugman, laureate of the Economics Nobel prize in 2008, described in his book « The Return of Depression Economics » how hedge funds exacerbated the crises in some Asian economies between 1997 and 1998 by running down the countries’ foreign currencies reserves to benefit from currency devaluations (2). This kind of manipulation of the markets could also happen in the bond market, and in turn this could trigger an unwinding of assets like we have seen in the current crisis.

Why not nationalize credit rating agencies?

The credit agencies should be nationalized; if not possible, this task should be given to the Federal Reserve or the SEC. Under this system, each investor would pay a very small fee each time he does a transaction in a regulated financial market, thus creating a pool of funds used to run these credit agencies. The government could design a performance-based pay scheme, which would reward the best analysts in these credit rating agencies. This way the agencies’ analysts would have their incentives set correctly. This setup would be costly and not very efficient, but it might be the price to pay to prevent another 2008-type financial crisis.

References

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123086073738348053.html
(2) Krugman, Paul, “The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008”, W.W. Horton, 2008, 224 pages.

It is no accident that the cities which have historically been centres of intense jazz activity have been those cities in which large numbers of musicians could find steady work. Montreal was no exception. The stability, spirit, and creative output of the city’s jazz community [during the 1920s to the 1960s] were directly linked to the capacity of the city’s entertainment industry to provide steady employment for musicians¹.
John Gilmore, Swinging in Paradise

Andrew Eick, Jazz Paints
a Picture, 2006
Certains droits réservés.

Jazz in New York City

How does a city become a “jazz capital of the world”? The criteria constitute a combination of factors as unique as a chain of enzymes forming to spark a new form of life into existence. There have been several throughout the century-long history of jazz, ranging from the southern U.S. cities of its birth such as New Orleans, St Louis and Kansas City, to the urban centers of its youth in Chicago and Philadelphia. Paris had its jazz heyday in the 50s when Sidney Bechet led the way for some of the best jazz players of the time to cross the ocean to tour. A society dame and her wealthy husband helped finance the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island (now the JVC Festival) in 1954, but by 1972 it had moved to New York, only returning to Newport in 1981 as a twin-site to New York’s more formidable draw. In Switzerland, the Montreux Jazz Festival was born in 1967, but by the 1970s, it was hardly exclusive to jazz. Ultimately, New York City has reigned not only because it was a natural hub for musicians, with its extensive club districts that grew up around the speakeasies where the nescient music developed and throve, its audiences hungry for recordings of the new sounds, but also because from the time the music had been around long enough to have its devotees, it was recognized as a musical form with the potential to rise to the heights of passion, sophistication and culture, and carry its musicians and listeners aloft with it. As with its Art Deco architecture and style, these were just the things New York sought to reflect in all its aspects.

Though the music had humble beginnings in the pick-up bands, which performed in parlours of brothels and in bars, its later practitioners were drawn from conservatories and music schools that enabled musicians to compete with the complexities of classical and symphonic forms. From Duke Ellington to John Coltrane and Bill Evans, musicians were studying structure and incorporating exotic and thrilling modes and inversions into their melodies and harmonies, breaking down chords and displacing rhythms. By the mid-50s, sounds from Latin America and Africa would push their way into the mix, further broadening horizons for the sound. As early as 1948, the New School for Social Research, located in the downtown Manhattan, was offering a series of well-attended lectures on jazz history and theory, and by the 1950s many colleges and universities were offering jazz classes in their music curriculum. In 1945, band leader Woody Herman commissioned the cosmopolitan Russian composer Igor Stravinsky to write the Ebony Concerto, a “jazz concerto grosso,” which was performed at Carnegie Hall.

The Montreal Jazz Scene, 1920s – 1960s

And what was going on in Montreal during this explosive period, when Swing gave way to Bebop, Hard Bop, and Free Jazz? The same factors that had elsewhere caused jazz to ferment in musical (and urban) ghettos were working up north as well. Racism and segregation had caused a large black community to gather in the area below the railroad tracks in the St Antoine district of downtown Montreal, as this was where porters and rail workers—mainly black—were hired and trained. Prohibition in the States also contributed to an influx of freedom-seeking club-goers, who flocked to clubs whose names they recognized from their originals in Harlem, like the Roseland Ballroom and Connie’s Inn (“Bringing Harlem to Montreal”)². The famous names of New York’s 52nd, or “Swing” Street, like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, could be found late-night at Montreal’s Café St Michel and the Terminal Club, sitting in for jam sessions with the locals, while Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Jimmy Dorsey brought their dance bands to the Chez Maurice in the 40s, with Ellington’s former trumpet player Louis Metcalf returning to Montreal in the mid 40s to bring the Bebop sound to Montreal, at the Café St Michel. But influence wasn’t all one-sided: Oscar Peterson brought awestruck musicians up from New York on a regular basis³.

White musicians also persisted in finding ways to spread ‘authentic’ jazz, like Willie Eckstein’s band, who were some of the first generation of francophone musicians to play jazz⁴. The all-black Canadian Ambassadors, an entirely indigenous Canadian band, had contracts at The Montmartre and Connie’s, later featuring Montreal native Steep Wade, formerly piano player for Metcalf’s band, who would keep them at the St Michel for years. Rockhead’s Paradise, begun in 1928 by one Rufus Rockhead, the first black club owner in the city, showcased black talent up to the 1960s. Montreal was fortunate in having more integration and generally less militant racism than the U.S. In one legendary incident, The Ritz Carlton Hotel refused to allow the Johnny Holmes Orchestra to play its date because it did not allow blacks—in this case, Oscar Peterson—in the hotel⁵. But the organization who had hired the band, (the “International Daughters of the Empire”!) called the manager to insist on Peterson’s being allowed to play. “Not content with the moral victory, Holmes kept Peterson in the spotlight…calling one piano feature after another all night long”⁶.

Montreal, however, could not maintain its musicians with steady work after World War II, when many clubs closed down due largely to a crack-down by formerly corrupt police and local government officials who then wanted to “clean up” the city. Also, the advent of television made it difficult for musicians everywhere, but the black community was hit especially hard, with contracts being withdrawn as demand for live shows waned. With Oscar Peterson in Toronto, and local talent split up due to unemployment, the jazz scene shifted away from its traditional roots to morph into the sound-track of the “Quiet Revolution” in the 1960s, with the birth of Musique Nouvelle, or Fusion Jazz, played now by young Quebec-born musicians like those playing in L’Infonie, Walter Boudreau’s “orchestra of the infinite”⁷.

A City, A Plan: Montreal

In the near future, Montreal, with the largest jazz festival in the world that in 2007 attracted over two million people attending shows by over 3000 jazz artists from 30 countries, may begin to give New York a run for the title. In November 2007, Mayor Gerald Tremblay of Montreal, the Honourable Michael Fortier, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and minister responsible for the region of Montreal, and Premier Jean Charest of Quebec, publicly announced the allocation of $120 million dollars—$40 million from each level of government—to finance the Special Planning Program for the Quartier des Spectacles, intended to “transform the Place des Arts area [where the Montreal Jazz Festival takes place each year]…to position Montreal as an international cultural destination”⁸. It is precisely because Montreal considers a strong jazz community an emblem of high culture that the jazz community has a lot to hope for from this legislation. As New York City has its “Jazz at Lincoln Center,” run by its Artistic Director, the Pulitzer Prize winning trumpeter and composer Mr. Wynton Marsalis, Montreal may hope to see a year-long jazz concert season in the Place des Arts’ Salle Wilfrid Pelletier, its premier performance venue.

A Tale of Two Managers

How does this translate into making Montreal a centre for jazz in today’s world? For a perspective fresh from the ranks of those living the jazz life alongside the musicians and their audience, I went to Mr. Joel Giberovich, owner of the Upstairs Jazz Club on Mackay Street in downtown Montreal. The club, coming into it’s 13th year, was invited to become an official venue of the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2007, in recognition of its commitment to jazz in the city. As luck would have it, I arrived to find in attendance the club’s most famous regular, Mr. Len Dobbin, Canada’s world-famous jazz critic and life-long chronicler of Canadian jazz, writer, and broadcaster for many years, an authority on the scene as one who lived it.

I asked them whether it would be significant to jazz if part of the focus of the Quartier des Spectacles was to create a specific “jazz village.” Has there been an irretrievable decline in the number of indigenous musicians playing jazz in the city since the destruction of the St Antoine district as a centre? Joel answered first: “To create a district definitely helps; even ten years ago, if you were in New York, you could go to the Vanguard, and if the music’s not what you’re looking for you could go next door to the Blue Note, and there was Sweet Basil down the street down there, feeding off each other as long as each one had its own niche. The Village Vanguard is a very different club than the Blue Note, and anyone who’s in the know is going to look for something different; for me, I always go the Vanguard because I look for the purity of the scene. But it’s all good as long as they complement each other. We don’t need two Upstairs, we don’t need two House of Jazz [another landmark Montreal club, formerly known as Biddles, on Aylmer Street], we need different club scenes to maintain the musicians, and possibly for serious clubs to work together to promote this music, because let’s be honest, you go into this business because you want this scene to last, to exist. All over the world, jazz is turning less into a club music and more of a concert or festival music. I mean, I went to Italy for my honeymoon and I couldn’t find one jazz club, and I looked. But I found jazz music at a festival.”

Mr. Dobbin offered further observation: “We’ve got a lot of young, talented people from different parts of the world because of McGill, which offers a Master’s Degree in jazz, and not that many universities offer that degree, so we’re getting some wonderful players here, at least for a short time; and some stay.”

“Concordia and the University of Montreal also have undergrad programs; we have a record label, Just In Time, which is a major label in the jazz world, we have the Conseil des Arts, specifically to promote music and the arts. You don’t want Montreal to be New York; it’s a small city with a big-city feel.”

“New York is a proving ground,” says Len, “people go and establish their worth there. I find, you pull up in a car in New York, and you feel the vibration.” I ask if there are any Canadians who play more jazz than others, and why I seem to meet so many from Winnipeg.

“Winnipeg has a very strong jazz society,” says Joel. But talent tends to stay local until it has a reason and an opportunity to take it to the next level. “If you look at this club all year round, Montreal musicians play 70% of the time, and on Friday and Saturday we bring in musicians.”

“Great musicians come from all over Canada,” Len interjects, “look at Nanaimo BC, what do they have in the water out there? They have the Jensen sisters, Seamus Blake and Diana Krall, all from that town, they all went to school together!”

What about the Quartier des Spectacles? Will it bring stability to the club scene?

“It depends on who’s running it,” Len observes dryly, but then offers a practical answer, “Air travel has changed jazz as much as anything, you don’t have to live near the clubs. In the heyday, bands would travel by bus, a long tour with a lot of dates spread from coast to coast. Now? You can play a weekend gig.”

To get some insightful perspective from the New York scene, I arranged a telephone interview with Mr. Jed Eisenman, who has been the manager of New York’s most famous jazz club, Village Vanguard, since about 1984. The club, located in the Greenwich Village area of the downtown west side of Manhattan, was opened in 1935 by visionary Max Gordon, and is the only one of the original district, (which included Eddie Condon’s, The Blue Note, The Village Gate, and several others) to have survived the test of time. Not one of the most important artists in jazz failed to play the club multiple times over the 7 decades of its vigorous life, and recordings “Live from the Village Vanguard” are some of the best ever made. What did he think of Montreal’s jazz ambitions?

“New York will always be the world-capital of jazz simply because so much of the music and the history was made here, but Montreal has a great, strong jazz scene—people seem committed to their identity as a centre for jazz in the world. But the old days of a jazz ghetto, where musicians would be able to percolate the sound, to learn from each other and riff off each other—those days are gone. Festivals are the trend, and clubs have to adjust. There was a Greenwich Village Jazz Festival for a while, but it wasn’t commercially successful. I’m sure clubs like Smalls and Sweet Rhythm have a lot of business from being near the Vanguard, but once you’re a fan of jazz, you tend to be loyal to the music.”

So that’s what it takes: an authentic history, decades of participation in the process, a city with a love of sophistication, culture, and liberality, that stays passionate about the arts, which bring people together to both educate and delight them, bring the whole world to join them in a public party that celebrates what it has helped to create. “Ultimately,” Jed concludes, “when a city has that vital, year-round jazz scene, it’s a capital of jazz.”

References

1. Gilmore, John. Swinging in Paradise. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1988: 13.
2. Marrelli, Nancy. Stepping Out: The Golden Age of Montreal Night Clubs, 1925-1955. Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2004: 22.
3. Lees, Gene. The Will to Swing. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Ltd., 1988.
4. Gilmore, 47.
5. Barris, Alex. Oscar Peterson: A Musical Biography. Toronto: Harper Collins, 2002.
6. Gilmore, 105.
7. Gilmore, 239.
7. 2006-2008 Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles. “$120 million at the Rendezvous.” <http://www.quartierdesspectacles.com/en/nouvelles/fichenouvelle.asp?id=52> emphasis mine.

shikeroku, shadow with green, 2005
Certains droits réservés.

The economy of the United States has recently taken a significant downturn. The stock market plummet and a number of failing financial institutions have called for massive government bailouts, all of which, in turn, have created a significant decrease in job security for an average taxpayer, as well as grounds for future tax increase. Considering the tax-cut policies, the bailout funds, and the million-dollar severance packages and bonuses received by heads of failing firms, the only ones benefiting from these problems seem to be the big businesses and the rich. We have seen a quite similar scenario about six years ago, with the stock market “bubble burst” in 2002 and recession that took place shortly after George W. Bush took over the U.S. presidency. The U.S. economy took the unhealthy turn for the average citizen, but benefited those at the top. Professor Robert Pollin of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, wrote a book titled “Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity,” in which he examined the economic policies under Clinton and Bush that led to the recession of 2002. The perspective this book offers is very important for a good understanding of the history of today’s global economic crisis; professor Pollin analyzes events and policies that were the moving force behind the currents of economic instability and shows that contemporary problems reach farther into history than is commonly thought.

Despite the popular belief that Bush is solely responsible for the recession of 2002, and for the global crisis afterwards, and that the Clinton era was the “golden age” of the U.S. economy, professor Pollin demonstrates otherwise. He claims that the root of the problem was planted in 1990s, with the rise of “bubble economy” under Clinton’s directive, which has been marked as the fastest and most alarming economic expansion in history (2); Pollin states that “the springs of economic growth under Clinton came from a levitating stock market setting off a debt-financed spending boom […] for the wealthy [… and] for corporations” (3). He further argues that the rewards of the economic growth flowed increasingly in the pockets of the wealthy while most workers faced stagnating or declining wages (4). This unhealthy financial boom made the economy appear as doing very well in spite of the fact that the issues of social inequality and financial instability worsened (5), until the times of crises began unraveling, even before Clinton left the office.

When the new administration of George W. Bush took over the presidency in 2001, it also became responsible for the economic crisis that was already in motion. It was up to the new administration to implement corrective measures to fight the crisis and get the economy back on the healthy path. Professor Pollin criticizes the way in which the Bush administration dealt with the problem, by arguing that his “overarching commitment [the unwavering agenda favoring big businesses and the rich], prevented him from advancing anything close to a serious program for either preventing a recession or shifting the economy toward a healthy growth track once the recession had begun” (6). Pollin also states that Bush’s tax cuts proposal for stimulating the economy was his most ambitious, even if disappointingly insufficient, initiative; and even this program was not to take effect in 2001, the year when recession was taking place (7). He also acknowledges the further economic hardship that was imposed by 9/11 terrorist attack, but again criticizes the way that Bush handled the problem: by increasing government military spending and cutting back on social programs.

The basic argument advanced in “Contours of Descent” is that the neoliberal economic model that favors the big businesses and the wealthy—implemented by both Clinton and Bush, as well as the International Monetary Fund—was historically shown to be a model that does not promote economic growth and prosperity, but rather increases inequality, altering employment security and financial stability for the worst. He also shows that the implementation of this “bankrupt” economic model in developing countries has had devastating results in terms of their overall growth, inequality, and poverty. Some of the attestations are the case of Argentina, where the implementation of this model ended in financial collapse, and the rise of poverty and sweatshop exploitation in Asia and Africa.

At the end of his book, Professor Pollin offers egalitarian alternative proposals to neoliberal policies, which focus on “increasing employment opportunities at decent wages and stable financial markets” (8), through increased regulation of labor and business. For the less developed countries, “renewing old policy approaches within a supportive global policy framework, as opposed to the current hostility of the U.S. government and IMF” would allow protection, security, and prosperity of their own economic systems (9). Pollin closes his book by referring to the thoughts of Adam Smith, father of modern economics: “a market economy will not be sustainable without a commitment to social solidarity as its undergirding” (10); he thus reveals his own inclination towards social justice.

Contours of Descent comes as a highly refreshing read; it shows the current economic conundrum from a more comprehensive perspective and inspires the reader to embrace a more humanitarian economic policy as a viable option, this time not as a mere utopian dream but as a valid product of sound arguments and analyses. Clearly, it took years for the global economic practices to culminate into the crises we witness today, and Pollin’s informed discussion of recent history will help the reader of every economic and political persuasion understand where, how, and why it all began. Contours of Descent dismantles the myth that only Bush is responsible for where we are today, persuasively adding Clinton to the list of the accused; the book also effectively counters the claim that the praised neoliberal economic model is beneficial for everyone. The book dismantles another, perhaps more important, myth: that continuing neoliberal practices will be beneficial in the future, in the long run, even for the big businesses and the rich. However, despite the fact that he sees no onset of change yet, Professor Pollin remains relatively optimistic; in 2004, during his lecture about Contours of Descent, he was asked about the possibility of his egalitarian economic approach ever being implemented. Here is what he answered:

Question: Wouldn’t the adoption of alternatives to neoliberalism proposed in Chapter 6 actually convert the current system to social democracy of some kind? Would that actually be possible in a crude capitalist country such as the U.S.?

Robert Pollin: I think it’s a fair characterization to say that the proposals in Chapter 6 would convert the current system to a social democracy of some kind. I try to show that, in strictly economic terms, this is entirely possible. Whether it would ever achieve the necessary degree of political support is another question. I actually think most people do favor this type of economic approach. For example, in Florida yesterday, 72% of voters supported a proposal to increase the statewide minimum wage by $1/hour and indexed to inflation thereafter. What could be more social democratic in spirit than that? Now, you may wonder, why then did Bush beat Kerry in Florida [in 2004 election]? That’s more into the realm of political speculation. But my guess is that, if Kerry had been more vocal in support of this measure that the 72% wanted, it might have even tipped the balance of the election (11).

References

(1) Pollin, Robert. Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity. London: Verso, 2003.
(2) Pollin, 10.
(3) Pollin, 6, 86.
(4) Pollin, 61.
(5) Pollin, 10.
(6) Pollin, 4.
(7) Pollin, 4.
(8) Pollin, 177.
(9) Pollin, 188.
(10) Pollin, 193.
(11) Pollin, Robert. Visiting scholar lecture on “Contours of Descent.” Burlington, Vermont: University of Vermont, 5 Nov 2004.

aprilzosia, 5.20.08, 2008
Certains droits réservés.

It is estimated that approximately 3% of children and 8% of adolescents will go through a major depression (1), which seems to completely go against the idea of what childhood is supposed to be all about: happiness and fun. Indeed, children usually like to play and interact with other people, but depressed children often show no interest in playing, distance themselves from others, and can even have suicidal thoughts. When children experience major depression, one of the treatment options consists of prescribing antidepressants. But are these medications safe for the developing minds of children? More importantly, does the consumption of these drugs pose a threat to their lives?

What are these medications?

A little over 50 years ago, researchers investigating iproniazid as a treatment for tuberculosis discovered the drug also had psychoactive properties. It made even terminally ill patients cheerful, optimistic and more active (2). Intrigued by this discovery, Zeller (3) later found that iproniazid and other similar drugs inhibited the mitochondrial enzyme monoamine oxidase, whose function is to inactivate certain neurotransmitters in the nervous system such as norepinephrine (NE), serotonin (5-HT), and dopamine (DA). This class of drugs are called Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors (MAOIs). The result of an MAOI such as iproniazid is that particular neurotransmitters remain longer in the brain and keep stimulating neurons for a longer period of time. This is important as lower levels of NE, 5-HT, and DA have been found to be related to depression. However, MAOIs were not used in the treatment of depression until a decade later. Soon after MAOIs started to be used as antidepressants, another kind of antidepressants, called Trycyclic Antidepressants (TCAs), was discovered. However, both types of antidepressants were only sparingly used as they were found to possibly interact dangerously with others drugs, left the patients with unpleasant side effects, and had significant toxicity and safety issues. Antidepressants called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) were later developed, and were finally approved for use with adult populations in 1987. SSRIs soon became the new trend in the treatment of depression. Indeed, they were found to be safer, easier to use, and better tolerated by patients (4).

Soon after, SSRIs were approved for children. Regulating agencies of different countries (such as the United States and United Kingdom) approved these new medications under the condition that pharmaceutical companies would have to conduct clinical trials in children and adolescent populations to insure the efficacy and safety of SSRIs.

Why are we worrying now? In 1990, Teicher and his colleagues (5) reported the case of 6 adults receiving the medication fluoxetine (FXT) as a treatment for their depression who started having suicidal ideas soon after starting to take their medication. However, an analysis of all the clinical trials of FXT, a SSRI better known as Prozac, indicated that the drug, compared to other antidepressant medications, did not significantly increase the risk of suicide (6).

In 2003, the controversy regarding the use of SSRIs resurfaced. At the time, as many as 50,000 children between the ages of 6 and 18 were taking antidepressants in the UK (7). That year, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) banned the use of all SSRIs for children and adolescents in the UK, except for Prozac. In 2004, the United States and Canada issued warnings for all SSRIs, and again, only Prozac was authorized as a treatment for depression in children in the United States (8, 9). It is important to note that in Canada, antidepressants were never authorized for use with children. The practice in place in Canada is called ‘off-label’ use, where doctors are expected to rely on their knowledge of their patients to decide what is best for them. Warnings were still issued to insure that doctors would be careful in their prescription of SSRIs for patients of all ages (8).

These sudden changes in the regulation stemmed from the publication of the firsts clinical trials of SSRIs with children and adolescents, years after the trials were actually conducted. Indeed, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) carried its first clinical trial in 1995-1996, but the results were not published until 2001. This study (10) compared the use of their drug Seroxat (sertraline) to a placebo, and found that 11 children suffered from serious side effects (such as suicidal ideation and cardiovascular problems), for which 7 had to be hospitalized. Also, when the analyses were reconducted, it was found that the drug was not effective in reducing depressive symptoms in children. It is interesting to note that across the few clinical trials conducted, very different results were reported, which can be partly attributed to the fact that different medications were used in children of different ages, with different conditions.

Are there really reasons to worry ?In 2006, Kratochvil and his colleagues (11) reanalysed all the data regarding studies on antidepressants that had been conducted thus far in order to assess the risk/benefit ratio of the use of SSRIs in children. SSRIs paroxetine, sertraline, venlafaxine, citalopram, nefazadone, and mirtazapine all showed mixed or negative findings regarding the outcomes for children and adolescents treated with these medications. Kratochvil and his colleagues came to the conclusion that only FXT (Prozac) helped in the treatment of depression in children and adolescents. It is mainly because of this study that regulating agencies decided to only approve the use of FXT in this young population. Yet, an important finding was that FXT was related to an increase in suicidality in about 2% of children and adolescents treated with the drug. However, it was concluded that the risks did not outweigh the benefits.

What should we do now?Many studies have found an increased risk of suicidality in the first few days of treatment with SSRIs, but on a long-term basis, suicidal risk decreased. One should wonder why such an association between antidepressant use and suicidality might exist. Indeed, it has been suggested that the use of SSRIs is associated with suicide because patients get treatment at an acute phase of their illness, which without treatment, might lead to even greater risk of suicidality. People who have experienced depression in their childhood are more likely to be depressed and to commit a suicide attempt once they reach adulthood. Therefore, not treating depression cannot be an option, even if the treatment may increase suicidal tendencies temporarily (12). Taken together, these results show that there might be slight reasons to worry about the use of FXT in treating depression in children and adolescents. FXT seems to be a relatively good solution compared to other SSRIs and to the risk of non-treatment. So far, SSRIs other than FXT have not been found to relieve children and adolescent of their depressive symptoms. These other medications have been banned in most countries (for example in the USA and UK), but in Canada, they could still be prescribed if doctors feel they are the best option for their patient.

This points to what should really be the focus of this discussion, namely the way in which these drugs are prescribed to children and adolescents, and especially how patients are followed once on medication. Indeed, research suggests that Prozac (FXT) is safe for children, but only in the context of good clinical care, that is when the doctor knows the patient well, sees him/her regularly, and can easily manage side effects. In a context where medical appointments get shorter, and harder to obtain, how likely is it that good clinical care will be provided? Another important fact to consider is that pharmacotherapy is not the only available treatment for depression. Other treatments for depression are Cognitive-Behavioural (CBT) Psychodynamic, Family and Interpersonal Therapy. If giving drugs to children and adolescents is not necessary, then should this be the treatment of choice?

Are there other options?

In sum, what emerges from this discussion is that several drugs have not proven to be effective and safe for use in children. However, FXT (Prozac) may be appropriate for use in such a population, as long as certain standards of care are met. Regular and close follow-up by doctors must be the norm when patients are prescribed drugs such as SSRIs, and this is especially critical in children and adolescents who may show increased suicidal tendencies at the beginning of the treatment. It is important to note, that medication is not the only solution in the treatment of depression in children and adolescents. Indeed, there is growing evidence that cognitive behaviour therapy, psychodynamic therapy, interpersonal therapy and family therapy are effective in treating pediatric depression (13). Recent research has shown that CBT was more beneficial than SSRIs in the treatment of depression in children and adolescents (14). Therefore, there are other options for families who do not feel comfortable with the use of medications in their children.

References

(1)Birmaher, Boris, et al. “Childhood and adolescent depression: A review of the past 10 years—part I.” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 35 (1996): 1427–39.
(2)Crane, George E. “The psychiatric side-effects of iproniazid.” American Journal of Psychiatry 112 (1956): 494–501.
(3)Zeller, E. Albert, James Barsky, and Elaine R. Berman. “Amine oxidases: inhibition of monoamine oxidase by 1-isonicotinyl-2-thiumispropyl hydrazine.” Journal of Biological Chemistry 214 (1955): 267–274.
(4 Lieberman III, Joseph A. “History of the Use of Antidepressants in Primary Care.”Primary Care Companion Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 5 (2003):6-10.
(5)Teicher, Martin H., Carol Glod, and Jonathan O. Cole. “Emergence of Intense Suicidal Preoccupation during Fluoxetine Treatment.” American Journal of Psychiatry147 (1990): 207-10.
(6)Beasley, Charles M., et al. “Fluoxetine and suicide: a meta-analysis of controlled trials of treatment for depression.” British Medical Journal 303 (1991): 685-92.
(7)Boseley, Sarah. (2003). “50 000 children taking antidepressants.” The Guardian. 2 Oct. 2007.
(8)Health Canada. Health Canada advises Canadians of stronger warning for SSRIs and other newer anti-depressants. (2004).2 Oct. 2007.
(9)FDA. Questions and Answers on Antidepressant Use in Children, Adolescent, and Adults. (2004). 2 Oct. 2007. http://www.fda.gov/CDER/Drug/antidepressants/Q&A_antidepressants.htm
(10) Keller, Martin B. Et al. “Efficacy of paroxetine in the treatment of adolescent major depression: a randomized, controlled trial.” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry40 (2001): 762-72.
(11) Kratochvil, Christopher J., et al. “Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in pediatric depression: Is the balance between benefits and risks favourable?”Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology16 (2006):11-24.
(12) Weissman, Myrna M., et al. “Depressed adolescents grown up.” Journal of the American Medical Association 281 (1999): 1707-13.
(13) Carr, Alan. “Depression in young people: Description, assessment and evidence-based treatment.” Developmental Neurorehabilitation11 (2008): 3-15.
(14) Perera, H. (2008). “Depression in children and adolescent” Ceylon Medical Journal 53 (2008): 65-7.

Jan Krömer, WC, 2007
Certains droits réservés.

(Re)Considering gender equality

Sexual and gender-based violence is a tool of modern warfare. Not a week goes by that horrific stories of rape and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo are not printed by a newspaper somewhere in the world. Before that, it was Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Bosnia. Following the mass violations of human rights that occur during conflicts, addressing these violations is one, if not the, greatest post-conflict challenges. Without addressing the legacies of these violations and upholding some form of justice for victims, societies cannot move forward with the reconciliation process necessary to build a sustainable peace.

Canada, along with the rest of the international community, prides itself on its role in protecting and promoting gender equality throughout the post-conflict peacebuilding process. While stories of traumatized and terrorized women, men, girls, and boys find their way out of the morass and into our daily lives, most of us trust our governments to undertake this messy task. As Canadians, however, few of us have a clear sense of what is meant by “gender equality”. Equality, sure. Gender, probably not. What is this “gender equality” of which we are so proud?

Getting back to basics: Gender and gender equality

Gender equality is enshrined in the international human rights framework as a fundamental right of all individuals. It is essential to achieving justice, sustainable development, and peace globally. For most of us, we believe what we hear: gender equality is about equality for women and girls with men and boys. Contrary to this commonly-held misperception, however, gender is not synonymous with sex. Gender is a social construction that impacts every aspect of our lives: society’s definition of masculinity, femininity, and every other “sexual-inity” in between. Dyan Mazurana explains that

“[g]ender is about the social roles of men, women, boys, and girls and relationships between and among them. The experiences and concerns of men, women, boys, and girls before, during, and after wars and armed conflicts are shaped by their gendered social roles. These roles are in turn formed by cultural, social, economic, and political conditions, expectations, and obligations within the family, community, and nation.(1)”

Promoting women’s equality with men is unquestionably an integral part of achieving gender equality. Women’s equality, however, is not gender equality. It is women’s equality. A comprehensive approach to gender equality must include equality for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) population.

Gender equality in practice: Canada

The Government of Canada has countless guidelines and policy documents demonstrating its commitment to gender equality internationally through its foreign policy work and international development assistance(2). Canada’s current programming and policies suggest that the Government understands gender to be synonymous with women and men. Gender equality, then, becomes promoting the equality of women and men.

Canada has succumbed to the classic “add-women-and-stir” approach. In talking about gender and gender equality, we are really speaking about women and girls: women at the decision-making table; women in the legal sector; women’s participation in development activities; women’s education. The assumption is that attention to women and women’s issues will result in gender equality. It does not examine the systematic structural barriers that prevent their full participation or the achievement of gender equality.

In doing so, we are wholly ignoring the other, equally important, side of the gender equality coin: the equality of LGBT populations. We are not alone in this. In the first time that conflicts’ impacts on women was formally acknowledged and made into a legally binding document by the international community, the United Nations used terms like gender violence, gender equality, gender mainstreaming and gender perspective to talk about females and females alone(3). This raises important questions about whose rights to gender equality we are upholding and which genders we, as Canadians, prioritize in our international work. It raises questions about the implications of a “gender-equality-equals-equality-for-females” approach to post-conflict justice and human rights.

Gender equality: The Colombian case

In Colombia, a new discussion is emerging virtually unnoticed by the international community. Colombia, stereotypically associated with drug-barons, wars, and the heroin mules of Maria Full of Grace, is talking about gender in the fullest sense of the word. In 2005, the government of Colombia created the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (NCRR) to address human rights abuses and promote peace(4). The NCRR is an independent mixed-body comprising government officials, civil society representatives, and victims of the conflict.

This spring, I was fortunate to attend a gender workshop by the CNRR that discussed the experiences of Colombia’s LGBT population in the Colombian conflict. The information on the experiences of the LGBT population during the conflict is limited. In other conflicts, LGBT populations have been targeted systematically by governments and armed groups as “scapegoats for social problems(5)” in order to bolster their own power.

Presenters and NCRR workshop participants alike recognized the importance of bringing this marginalized community into the national process of truth, justice, and reconciliation. The workshop participants stressed the importance of working with the LGBT community to document their experiences in the conflict (where they are particularly targeted by armed groups on all sides) and of using the NCRR’s influence to promote LGBT rights and prevent LGBT populations from being targeted for abuses of human rights. The conversation about gender and reconciliation turned into one of gender equality and gender justice in the past, present, and future. The NCRR has yet to begin any projects with LGBT populations, though it is currently developing project proposals with LGBT groups. Writing about the lack of research on abuses against sexual minorities and women by truth commissions, Kelli Muddell articulates the significance of such steps:

“By not engaging [women’s groups] or adequately consulting the existing documentation of abuses against this specific constituency, commissions have had a lack of understanding about the types of abuses that have taken place during conflict resulting in such abuses not being recorded and those victims not being represented.(6)”

This certainly applies to LGBT populations as well.

Conclusion

It is too early to state the implications of a more inclusive approach to gender equality for long-term transitional justice and reconciliation. Information on the impact of the inclusion of LGBT issues during transitional justice on gender equality during conflict resolution and peacebuilding is new and slowly emerging. In most countries, violations of the rights of LGBT populations rarely enter the public dialogue in any substantive way. Attention to LGBT populations by transitional justice institutions is limited and largely thanks to the dedicated efforts of a few key individuals rather than a systematic effort of the institutions themselves. The attention that these individuals can pay to promote LGBT populations’ rights is limited, however, by the many other tasks they must complete.

Colombia, with its culture of machismo, has a long way to go to achieve gender equality for LGBT populations, let alone equality between women and men. LGBT populations continue to face incredible levels of discrimination, and even abuse, in Colombia. Still, in Colombia, the NCRR is talking about gender equality, and is moving beyond equality between women and men. For this, it must be applauded. Perhaps Canada, as it ticks of the next “Yes-project/policy/agreement-has-a-gender-perspective/promotes-gender-equality” box, can learn something here.

To truly promote gender equality Canadians need to talk about gender in all senses of the word, lest we be accused of being gender relativists. This means supporting and promoting equality for women, men, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender populations in our international policies and programming to promote human rights in a holistic way in post-conflict countries. This is not an easy task, nor will it be a straightforward one either. Recognition of the rights of LGBT populations and their experiences in conflicts is necessary to establish post-conflict social orders grounded in justice and human rights. We must treat it as so.

References

(1)“Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter2” http://ghostrecon.uk.ubi.com/graw2/info/index.php
(2)Rubio-Goldsmith, Raquel et al., “The “Funnel Effect” & Recovered Bodies of Unauthorized Migrants Processed by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, 1990-2005.” The Binational Migration Institute (BMI), 2006 Pg, 6
(3)See discussion in Doty Lynn Roxanne. “Crossroads of Death” in The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror. Eds., Dauphinee, Elizabeth & Masters, Christina. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 & for further exploration on the subject matter see Doty Lynn Roxanne. “Fronteras Compasivas and the Ethics of Unconditional Hospitality.”Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.35 No. 1 (2006): 53-74
(4)Ibid., Pg 16
(5)agamben
(6)Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995 Pg 199
(7)Foucault, Michel “The Political Investment of the Body” in The Body: A Reader. Fraser, Mariam & Greco Monica eds. London: Routledge, 2005Pg, 100
(8)Ibid., Pg, 84
(9)Ibid.,
(10) Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995 Pg, 199
(11)Agamben, Georgio. “No to Bio-Political Tattooing.”Makeworlds. 2004 at http://www.makeworlds.org/node/68
(12)Ibid.,
(13)Ibid., 100-2
(14)Doty Lynn Roxanne. “Crossroads of Death” in The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror. Eds., Dauphinee, Elizabeth & Masters, Christina. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Much of the analysis in this piece is based on the findings in: Rubio-Goldsmith, Raquel et al., “The “Funnel Effect” & Recovered Bodies of Unauthorized Migrants Processed by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, 1990-2005.” The Binational Migration Institute (BMI), 2006
(15)Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. See Chapter 3 on “Panopticism”
(16)Ibid.,
(17)Doty Lynn Roxann. “Fronteras Compasivas and the Ethics of Unconditional Hospitality.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.35 No.1 (2006): Pg, 59
(18)Foucault, Michel “The Political Investment of the Body” The Body: A Reader. London: Routledge Pg, 104
(19)Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995 Pg 204
(20)Kearney, Michael. “Borders and Boundaries of State and Self at the End of Empire.” Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 4 No. 1 (1991): Pgs 60-1
(21)Sassen, Saskia. Globalization and its Discontents. New York: The New York Press, 2005 Pg, 43

Borders, Essence of a Dream, 2008
Certains droits réservés.

Manoeuvring as if ‘ghosts’ through the architectural wasteland of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in the year 2014, the technologically sophisticated and hypermasculinized soldier of the future is designated a simple and an urgent task to deter borderhackers from infecting the American way of life. Acquiring a divine-like might, this band of cyborg soldiers featured in the video game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter2 are “dropped into hell with only 72 hours to prevent an all out war” by securing a terrain of roughly two thousand miles.(1) On this terrain, there are no crystallized borders, spatial barriers, and architectural impediments that cannot be transcended by the omnipresent gaze of the game navigator. Such de-bordering, however, is also a mirror image of a practice of re-bordering where human beings depicted as borderhackers and reduced to a biological existence are annihilated. The game shows us that the practice of securing the border legitimates the removal of undesirables, and that the production of their deaths, in turn, fortifies spatial partitioning between the U.S. and Mexico. In the final hour of the game, the prevention of an impending virus from penetrating the border gestures the safety of the American nation.

While the game is a fictional parable set in a futuristic moment, the topography on which the low-intensity war happens, and the sacrifice of undesirables as securing the biological reproduction and conservation of American society, invites thought on border spaces as apparatuses that manage life and death. Border spaces, however, are not complete and permanent forms; together with the illegality of undesirables, they are mutually and continually performed assemblages. Unlike the parable of the game where the total annihilation of borderhackers reinforces the existence of the border, I am arguing that in actuality such violent spectacles of securing at the U.S.-Mexico border require the perpetual movement and de-bordering that is performed by undesirable bodies. The threat of potential border penetration by illegal migrants is required for re-bordering, just as violent spectacles at the border reproduce the delinquent status of undesirables. What then, does illegality do for the state? What can be said about its relationship to the American way of life?

Behind the Spectacle of Securing

The production of this video game glorifies a militarized and masculinized American culture. The virtual and anarchic world of the game, though seemingly distant, simulates the actual insofar as it echoes the growing militarization of the U.S. border with Mexico in the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. The deaths of undesirables in the game is not unlike the reality at the border. With the implementation of the U.S. immigration laws in the 1990s, notably the initiation of ‘prevention through deterrence’ operations, the deaths of undesirables in the borderlands have reached a humanitarian crisis.(2) The task of such operations has been to redirect movement away from highly monitored, patrolled, and fenced border zones, towards crossing more extensive, dangerous, and uninhabited terrains.(3)

Roxanne Doty argues that ‘prevention through deterrence’ operations are founded on an awareness of the body’s physiological needs, “the horror of the human body without enough water…other hazards such as dangerous terrain, the extreme cold of desert nights, [and] drowning in water.”(4) What such operations do is render borderlands into no man’s lands or spaces of exception(5) where death and violence is invisible, while manufacturing spectacles of securing through military presence and surveillance technologies. Such militarization conveys an illusionary sense of security, since it has meant the insecurity of thousands of human lives. While border militarization reifies the physical and territorial limits of the American nation, it also reproduces the representation of southern migrants as delinquent and volatile bodies that must be contained through violence. While neo-liberalism annuls borders, illegality plays a pivotal function in fixing the positioning of the state as the sovereign guarantor of national security against foreign threats.

Performing Illegality

The role that illegality plays in the reproduction of the American way of life however goes beyond the topography of the borderlands, although the border is the vital apparatus responsible for the disciplinary partitioning between illegal and legal.(6) The production of illegality and the partitioning that takes place at the border have been integral to the exploitation of labour from the south. It is through this partitioning that undocumented migrants are made docile – they become “both a productive body and a subjugated body.”(7) Such partitioning is realized through techniques of surveillance and biometric mechanisms employed by the state to bring growing populations under surveillance by converting the body into a password.(8) Those that have the incorrect code are denied access. But, of course, the state controls and manipulates both the code and the devices by which passwords are deciphered. Apart from verbal confirmations of identity, the scanning of retinas, fingerprints, facial profiles, and bodily dimensions, are but a few of the methods by which the body confessesbefore the sovereign.(9) It is the body, rather than the voice, which confesses at the border. Identities are thus written on bodies for the purposes of ranking them and disciplining them as un/healthy, un/productive, un/desired, inferior or superior.(10) Underlying such ‘bio-political tattooing’(11) is thus an encoded evaluation of the moral worth and economic use-value of migrants(12) With regards to border politics, exclusion through illegality is a marker that dehumanizes, with the goal of extracting labour power from the body, and the shaping of the body into an economically efficient unit. (13) In other words, devices of disciplining at the border are not meant to convert illegal foreign bodies into nationals. Rather, the objectified body of the Mexican migrant represents an extractable and expandable labor resource that contributes to the reproduction of American life. More to the point, while “foreign labour is desired…the persons in whom it is embodied are not.”(14)

Behind the state’s overarching power over the body is a twofold aim: to structure its optimal functioning within a system of power relations, and to make it vulnerable to external malleability. One of the ways in which the docility of the body is normalized is through an internalization of surveillance and disciplining in times of movement, with the state having no longer to use direct forms of coercion to manage and contain it.(15) Michel Kearney argues that the militarization of the border, along with the variety of technological methods of surveillance, is not conducted for the purposes of entirely deterring the entry of illegal labour. The underlying principle behind crossings away from highly surveillances and accessible border spaces is to subjugate bodies by forcing them to cross hazardous and infrequently monitored terrains in the desert.(16) Migrations through such dangerous terrains subjugate the body by reducing it to a biological existence, which renders their labour power open to exploitation. The very process of being smuggled into the U.S. insinuates the commodification of the body, together with the violence experienced by migrants during their voyage, point towards their loss of personhood as migrants shed their status as Mexican citizens to become apolitical, undocumented, and invisible.(17) Preventing migrants from gaining citizen status and socio-political rights is a practice that begins well before their entry into American society. The physical violence and dangers confronted in border spaces works at this degradation of personhood and severing power from the body.(18) It is this splintering, a splintering actualized through the classification of bodies as illegal, which works to configure the migrant body into an economically exploitable and efficient unit.

Border surveillance further congeals the subjugation of undocumented bodies by constituting the subjectivities that migrants perform when crossing designated terrains. Although indirectly, it is by policing migrant mobility that the state reproduces and normalizes parameters around how undocumented bodies are identified, regulated, and administered. Given that undocumented migrants are criminalized prior to crossing the Mexico-U.S. border, they are constantly conscious of their perusal, potential detention, and deportation by Border Patrol. As such, undocumented bodies are not only disciplined through direct surveillance, but they are deemed docile by internalizing the sovereign’s “seeing machine.”(19) Kearney’s ethnographic reflections from migrants reinforce these observations:

He was thinking, he says, that he felt like a criminal, like someone who had to hide because they were doing some bad thing. But, he says, he could not understand what bad thing he was doing for he is an honest man who comes to the United States only to work, to leave his sweat and earn some money…The other men agree that they feel the same when they are exposed to possible apprehension by the Border Patrol or by other police agents.(20)

This excerpt shows that migrants are conscious of the subjectivity generated through their surveillance. In particular, by internalizing the gaze of the sovereign, they are disciplined to ‘feel like criminals.’ It is worth noting that the internalization of delinquent status reinforces the position that illegal migrants are compelled to occupy in American society, in particular that they take on unwanted jobs that are ‘off the books.(21) Rather than mending the delinquent status of the migrant, surveillance serves to ingrain the stigma that undesirables bear, while also working to subjugate and manipulate their labour power. The (re)production of migrant criminality and illegality has been pivotal to such an extraction.

The nexus between illegality and border politics demonstrates that the north continues to appropriate the labour of southern peoples through legally institutionalized discourses of illegality. The subjugation of the migrant body in the borderlands can be attributed to both, policies of exclusion, and, disciplinary practices that are actualized at the border. While such apparatuses of securing may give an illusionary sense of safety, they have also meant the insecurity of thousands of human lives, the lives of those who have left remnants of violence in the desert, and of those who continue to reproduce American life through their subjugation and exclusion.

References

(1)“Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter2” http://ghostrecon.uk.ubi.com/graw2/info/index.php
(2)Rubio-Goldsmith, Raquel et al., “The “Funnel Effect” & Recovered Bodies of Unauthorized Migrants Processed by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, 1990-2005.” The Binational Migration Institute (BMI), 2006 Pg, 6
(3)See discussion in Doty Lynn Roxanne. “Crossroads of Death” in The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror. Eds., Dauphinee, Elizabeth & Masters, Christina. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 & for further exploration on the subject matter see Doty Lynn Roxanne. “Fronteras Compasivas and the Ethics of Unconditional Hospitality.”Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.35 No. 1 (2006): 53-74
(4)Ibid., Pg 16
(5)agamben
(6)Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995 Pg 199
(7)Foucault, Michel “The Political Investment of the Body” in The Body: A Reader. Fraser, Mariam & Greco Monica eds. London: Routledge, 2005Pg, 100
(8)Ibid., Pg, 84
(9)Ibid.,
(10) Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995 Pg, 199
(11)Agamben, Georgio. “No to Bio-Political Tattooing.”Makeworlds. 2004 at http://www.makeworlds.org/node/68
(12)Ibid.,
(13)Ibid., 100-2
(14)Doty Lynn Roxanne. “Crossroads of Death” in The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror. Eds., Dauphinee, Elizabeth & Masters, Christina. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Much of the analysis in this piece is based on the findings in: Rubio-Goldsmith, Raquel et al., “The “Funnel Effect” & Recovered Bodies of Unauthorized Migrants Processed by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, 1990-2005.” The Binational Migration Institute (BMI), 2006
(15)Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. See Chapter 3 on “Panopticism”
(16)Ibid.,
(17)Doty Lynn Roxann. “Fronteras Compasivas and the Ethics of Unconditional Hospitality.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.35 No.1 (2006): Pg, 59
(18)Foucault, Michel “The Political Investment of the Body” The Body: A Reader. London: Routledge Pg, 104
(19)Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995 Pg 204
(20)Kearney, Michael. “Borders and Boundaries of State and Self at the End of Empire.” Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 4 No. 1 (1991): Pgs 60-1
(21)Sassen, Saskia. Globalization and its Discontents. New York: The New York Press, 2005 Pg, 43